Cuban Minister tells Bush: Stay away from Americas summit

Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque says US president George Bush should not attend the Summit of the Americas in Argentina this weekend, because he was neither liked nor respected in Latin America.

“President Bush should take note of the rejection of his regime by Latin America,” Perez Roque told The Associated Press in an interview. “It must be hard to be the president of the most powerful country on earth: powerful, but not loved; feared, but not respected.”

“I think the people of the US deserve a better president – someone nicer.”

Communist-run Cuba, an adversary of the US for more than four decades, is the only country in the hemisphere that was not invited to the summit hosted by the regional Organisation of American States.

The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the early 1960s and the US has maintained trade sanctions on the island since then in an effort to force a change in President Fidel Castro’s economic and political systems.

The Bush administration has significantly tightened those sanctions in recent years and has developed a plan to seek a democratic transition in Cuba once Castro, now 79, is gone.

“Cuba cannot go because the US is the owner” of the Summit of the Americas, said Perez Roque, who indicated his nation would not go even if it could.

But he said Cuba was looking forward to taking part in a competing “People’s Summit” and march in the coastal resort of Mar de Plata and had sent a large delegation led by parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon.

The so-called “People’s Summit,” organised by left-wing activists opposed to the hemispheric wide Free Trade Area for the Americas will feature a march tomorrow protesting at Bush’s presence at the official gathering.