Cuba declares referendum effort dead *** HAVANA - Cuba's National Assembly yesterday officially quashed a proposed referendum on political and economic reforms that had been hailed as the boldest dissident challenge to President Fidel Castro's communist government in more than 40 years. "The case was reviewed by the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, which decided not to proceed, and to inform its sponsors of that verdict," said Miguel Alvarez, an aide to National Assembly Speaker Ricardo Alarcon. Oswaldo Paya, leader of the referendum effort known as the Varela Project, was out of the country and not immediately available for comment.
In May, Varela Project delivered to the assembly boxes of petitions bearing more than 11,000 signatures requesting the popular referendum on political and economic reforms under the current constitution. Explaining the rejection of the opposition effort, Mr. Alvarez said it "went against the very foundation of the constitution, amongst other reasons." "It has already been shelved," Mr. Alvarez added, in the first official declaration that Cuba's one-chamber parliament considered the Varela Project dead.***
Brazil's new leader takes an unlikely global role*** *** "The [Workers' Party] has made it very clear it is a social democratic party in the making," says Riordan Roett, a Brazil expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. "They want nothing to do with dictatorship or authoritarianism or anticonstitutional moves. And while [Lula] politically and psychologically identifies more with [Fidel] Castro, [Ecuadorean President Lucio] Gutierrez, and Chávez ... he realizes very well that he has to have a very pragmatic and shrewd foreign policy." Mr. Roett and other experts acknowledge that the US is probably not overjoyed at Lula's close relationship with Mr. Castro, or his willingness to engage other presidents, like Chávez or the leftist Mr. Gutierrez, who have never hidden their dislike of US policy and influence. Some, like Rep. Henry Hyde (R) of Illinois, chairman of the House
International Relations Committee, have even gone as far as to say that Lula may have posed as a moderate in order to win the election and then form, with Chávez and Castro, a Latin American axis. Lula's words and actions since taking power call in question that prediction, and with President Bush paying little attention to the region - the administration did not send high-ranking officials to the inaugurations of either Lula or Gutierrez - the way may be open for Lula to continue carving out a leadership role. "Brazil has always had good diplomats," says Mauro Silva, a union leader attending the six-day Porto Alegre summit, which is due to wrap up tomorrow. "Lula knows how to talk to people. It was a skill he learned as a trade-union leader. He could be a mediator ... and a bridge between [the right and left]."***