Obama to Mexico, hemispheric summit

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, home for little more than a week following his week-long trek across Europe and surprise stop in Baghdad, will leave Thursday for Mexico and head from there to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, for a hemispheric conference this weekend, the Summit of the Americas.

The Mexican visit is "designed to send a very clear signal to our friends in Mexico City that we have a series of shared challenges as it relates to the economy, as it relates to security, insecurity, the threat of violence, and the impact of drug trafficking on both our countries,'' says Denis McDonough, director of strategic communications for the National Security Council.

"It was obviously designed that way to send a very strong signal to (Mexican) President Calderón that we admire -- the President admires his work as it relates to confronting violence and impunity by criminal trafficking organizations, but also wanting to underscore and more deeply develop our bilateral relationship on economic matters, as well as on matters related to energy and climate change.''

Both in Mexico and at the summit, the Obama administration is intent on "reengaging with this hemisphere,'' says Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow, director of the summit

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder all have traveled already to Mexico, confronting an escalating war with drug lords that has claimed thousands of lives.

And all 34 of the nations with democratically elected governments in the hemisphere will attend the summit in Trinidad, the fifth such Americas summit since 1994.

That basically means all but Cuba.

"There are two basic backdrops,'' Davidow says of the summit. "One, the perception coming up from the South that in recent years the United States has turned its attention elsewhere, has neglected its relationships in this part of the world.

"Whether one agrees with that perception or not, it certainly is a very strongly felt perception which... the president has been counteracting since even before he took office,'' he says. "This summit will give him the opportunity to meet with all the heads of state, listen to them, exchange views, and come away... with new ideas, both ones that he's developed and ones that he's heard.''

"The other major backdrop here is the world economic situation,'' Davidow says. "This hemisphere has done relatively well over the past five or six years compared to previous decades, in terms of growth of gross domestic product and alleviation of poverty. And in the last year these achievements have started to dwindle away.

"And there was a real concern that Latin America or the hemisphere may be entering into another lost decade. By that they mean no growth, maybe even negative growth, with growing poverty,'' he says. "Therefore, one of the major topics will be the economy, both at its macro level -- that is, the kinds of things that were discussed at the G20 -- and also something the President feels very strongly about, which is that in this economic crisis, the poorest of the poor, the voiceless, should not be the ones that have to pay a disproportionate amount of the cost of the crisis, and that development should come from the bottom up.''

Daniel Restrepo, White House senior director for Western Hemispheric Affairs, says: "If you ask -- if you conduct polls -- and people have -- the challenges, the principal challenge facing people in their daily lives throughout the Western Hemisphere, they will tell you it is the economy and it is public safety.

"And the President believes that we can at this summit -- looking forward and in a pragmatic way of how can we confront these challenges that we face together,'' he says.

Restrepo this week helped announce the adminitration's easing of restrictions on Cuba, allowing Cuban Americans with families on the island unlimited travel there and no caps on the money that they can share with their relatives. While maintaining the decades-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, the Obama administration hopes to foster more freedom by opening up lines of communication between the Cuban people and American relatives - and that includes sponsoring cell-phone communication.

"At the end of the day, it is quite clear that there are shared responsibilities in the hemisphere,'' Restrepo says.

On the drug war-front, the Mexicans contend that, while it is their responsibility to help contain the flow of drugs into the United States, the U.S. also has an obligation to restrict the flow of weapons into Mexico that are helping arm the drug dealers.

"The president understands the challenges presented by the illegal flow of weapons from the United States to Mexico,'' Restrepo says. Obama "believes we can make a great deal of headway enforcing the laws that are on the books today and make a real positive difference in terms of the flow, the illegal flow of weapons to Mexico... He looks forward to speaking President Calderón on ways that we can work together more effectively to cut these illegal flows.''

But he stops short of answering a question about the president's stance on the assault weapons ban that was repealed in the U.S., an issue that the attorney general also sidestepped in a recent media interview, with Holder maintaining that "I respect the Second Amendment'' and will defer to administration policy.

"In terms of specifics out of the trip, we do expect some,'' McDonough says. "We do expect that the president will go to the summit with some concrete proposals....We'll have an opportunity to speak to you about them in very specific terms... on the trip.''

The U.S. will carry some concessions about Cuba into this summit, though this still stops short of lifting the trade embargo, which other nations in the hemisphere have encouraged. One of the leaders of the democratically elected nations at this summit will be Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, ally of Cuba and a fierce critic of the last Bush administration and Bush personally.

"As it relates to Cuba, we've been obviously consulting about this here at home with Congress, and you can imagine that there's some who wanted to do more and some who wanted us to do less,'' McDonough says. "o we anticipate that our friends in the region, with whom we've always had a spirited discussion about Cuba, will raise this.

"We obviously see, for example, that the issue of remittances is one of vital importance for other countries in the hemisphere. And what we're trying to do generally is focus on lowering the cost of sending those remittances for working families here who are trying to send it to their families in their home countries. And so one thing that we hope we can encourage all of our friends to do is to work with us to call on the Cuban government to reduce the cost associated with the remittances sent to Cuban families.''