Cuban President Fidel Castro (L), Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (C) and Colombian Andres Pastrana talk during the closing of the III summit of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) on Margarita Island, Venezuela, December 12, 2001. Caribbean leaders signed cooperation and trade agreements where Chavez carried his left-leaning agenda into the Caribbean Summit urging his Caribbean neighbors to shun a U.S.-backed hemispheric free trade zone. REUTERS/Jose Miguel Gomez