QUEBEC – Making democracy the heart of the world’s most ambitious free trade agreement, Western hemisphere leaders met today to wind up 34-nation summit in a city littered with the debris of angry clashes between protesters and riot police.
More clashes occurred overnight, with protesters setting fires and smashing windows in an area near the riverfront. Police said 253 people were arrested Saturday night and early Sunday. In the days of unrest, 403 people were arrested, and at least 46 police officers and 57 demonstrators were injured.
President Bush and leaders from across the Americas, meeting behind heavily guarded chain-link fences in this picturesque city, attended a church service before starting their final session, in which they were expected to sign a final declaration.
They agreed Saturday that only democratic nations should share the fruits of the free-trade zone of 800 million people that is to link markets from Alaska to Argentina by 2005.
”From this day forward, the benefits of any agreements we reach will flow only to those nations that abide by our democratic clause,” host Premier Jean Chretien said at a news conference.
Even Venezuela’s populist Hugo Chavez – who staged a failed coup as a young lieutenant colonel in 1992 – told reporters Sunday that his country would sign despite reservations.
”In Venezuela’s case, representative democracy has been a trap that almost led the country to bloodshed,” he said. ”Some barons who were elected felt that they had a blank check to rob, betray and steamroll others.”
On Saturday, Chavez said he believes that ”the threats to democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean are not the armed forces or conspiratory movements, but hunger and poverty.”
The leaders were expected to release a draft text of the free-trade accord on Sunday.
That would meet a key demand of citizens’ groups who have protested peacefully here since the summit started Friday.
But it is unlikely to appease more radical, rock-throwing protesters intent on tearing down the summit perimeter fence. Those protesters have clashed with nightstick-wielding riot police who responded with water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.
Streets were quiet on a rainy Sunday morning, but security remained tight in case of more protests. Police said nearly 30,000 marchers processed through Quebec City on Saturday, with a few thousand growing violent along the security fence.
Protests continued into the night and a stinging mist of tear gas settled on the city as the leaders and their spouses gathered at the Congress Center for dinner and entertainment.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general, told reporters he wasn’t bothered by the fumes: ”It didn’t affect me, but an old infantryman always remembers what tear gas and pot smell like when you walk into the barracks.”
The so-called ”democracy clause” would exclude any country that ceases to be a democracy from participation in future summits, membership of the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the benefits of the Inter-American Development Bank, a key regional financier, Chretien said.
The idea is to strengthen multiparty systems that have replaced military and civilian dictatorships across the region over the past two decades but have appeared increasingly shaky in some countries as economic prosperity has failed to follow.
Cuba was the only country in the region excluded from the Quebec summit, for its lack of free elections.
One by one on Saturday, the leaders argued that expanded trade would buoy a variety of social causes.
Bush said democracies would take root. Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodriguez said tiny economies like his would flourish. Colombian President Andres Pastrana said his country would be better equipped to fight drug trafficking.
Mindful of the protesters outside, even the most vocal free traders acknowledged the down sides.
Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose nation joined Canada and the United States in a 1994 free-trade pact, said the benefits of lower tariffs help economies but can bypass the poor.
”There is a lot to celebrate, but there is also a lot to lament,” Fox said. ”We need a strong expansion of economic citizenship, to democratize the markets. Only by doing that can we develop the energy of the millions who have been excluded from economic development.”
Even Bush felt compelled to offer a new South and Central American program to help modernize judicial institutions, protect basic human rights and root out corruption.
”Free and open trade creates new jobs and new income. It lifts the lives of our people,” he said.
