Prensa Latina, Cuba

Cuba Hosts Anti-FTA Meeting

3 May 2007

Havana, May 3 (Prensa Latina) The sixth Hemispheric Meeting to Fight Free Trade Agreements and for integration of the peoples began sessions at Havana Convention Center on Thursday.

Over 700 delegates and more than 400 guests from 33 countries of this continent, including university professors and students, as well as local economists, are attending the three-day event.

In his opening speech, Raymundo Navarro, secretary of Foreign Relations of the Central Workers Union of Cuba (CTC), said the meeting is aimed at achieving unity of action and rejection of free trade agreements.

Elizabeth Peredo, from the Bolivian Initiative for Peoples’ Integration, presented the agenda to be discussed and recalled that these meetings started as a way to fight the FTAA, but after five years their slogan is to fight FTAs in general.

An inaugural lecture on "The Struggle against Free Trade and for Peoples’ Integration" was given by Cuban Osvaldo Martinez, who chairs the meeting s organizing committee.

Vice President of the State Council of the Republic of Cuba Carlos Lage, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Fernando Remirez de Estenoz, who is a member of the Cuban Communist Party s Central Committee, also attended the opening session.