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news without borders
Obama wins praise
as summit ends
PORT OF SPAIN: Latin American leaders
are hailing as a success an Americas sum-
mit closing yesterday that consecrated
President Barack Obama as a positive
partner in the hemisphere who won over
even die-hard anti-US critics.
A formal closing ceremony yesterday
was due to set the seal on the Fifth Sum-
mit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago
that served to introduce Obama to a region
where America-bashing has long been ac-
cepted as a nationalist reflex.
In contrast to the previous 2005 sum-
mit in Argentina that ended in discord, the
Port of Spain meeting was humming with
good feelings projected by the young new
US president, who promised a cooperative
partnership of equals with his peers.
“We made a lot of progress. With the
expectations for tensions that had originally
existed, I think the fact that the summit was
cordial must be qualified as a success,”
Dominican Republic President Leonel Fern-
andez told reporters.
Obama had to field a chorus of calls to
lift the US trade embargo on communist-
ruled Cuba, but that did not stop him from
brainstorming with the other 33 heads of
state on the global economic crisis and
regional energy and security challenges.
The United States’ first black president
appeared to have been a hit with his coun-
terparts from the racially mixed region, even
with those who often pilloried his predeces-
sor, George W. Bush, as the diabolic epitome
of “imperialism.”
The most prolific Bush-basher, Venezue-
lan President Hugo Chavez, was a model
of effusive civility with Obama, telling him,
“I want to be your friend” in English and
presenting him with a left-wing book on
Latin America as a gift.
Chavez felt sufficiently reassured by
Obama to propose naming a new ambas-
sador to Washington to restore normal ties.
He had expelled the US envoy to Caracas in
September and Washington had responded
by kicking out Venezuela’s ambassador in a
dispute over US activities in Bolivia.
Washington said the move to restore
ambassadors was “positive.”
Chavez headed a group of left-wing
presidents, including Evo Morales of Bo-
livia, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Rafael
Correa of Ecuador, who denounced Cuba’s
absence from the summit and rejected the
final draft declaration as deficient.
They said it failed to address Cuba’s
exclusion and also did not provide concrete
solutions to the global economic crisis that
threatens to send millions in the region
back to poverty.
The more than 60-paragraph declaration,
which diplomats worked on for months,
commits the hemisphere’s leaders to “Se-
curing Our Citizens’ Future by Promoting
Human Prosperity, Energy Security and
Environmental Sustainability.”
Given the objections to the document
from some presidents, there were doubts
whether a formal signing would be held.
Regional leaders said that did not de-
tract from the generally positive spirit and
progress of the meeting.
REUTERSPIX
Chavez
“I think the summit has been a great (right) gives
success by itself, through the quality of the Obama a
dialogue that occurred between the presi- copy of
dents,” Organisation of American States
“Las Venas
Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza told Abiertas
reporters.
de America
“The presence of President Obama has Latina”
certainly made a powerful contribution to
during a
the positive climate and success of the meeting at
summit,” Insulza said, adding the leaders
the summit
had held substantive talks on the economic
in Port
crisis and other issues.
Insulza did not believe the summit had of Spain,
been distracted by a debate over US-Cuban Trinidad on
ties that dominated its buildup. Saturday.
Hopes for a rapprochement between
Washington and Havana have risen after
both Obama and Cuban President Raul
Castro signaled they were ready to talk
to try to end the long-standing ideological
conflict between their countries.
Obama told the opening session of the
summit on Friday he wanted a “new begin-
ning” with Cuba and had made a gesture
by easing some aspects of the US embargo
earlier in the week.
The US leader also made clear he wanted
Cuba to reciprocate by opening up political
freedoms for its citizens. – Reuters
EARTHREPORT
Week Ending April 17
Sudden sea rise
SEA levels have the potential to rise 10 feet in
far less than a century due to climate change,
according to a recent study of coral beds in
Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Writing in the
journal Nature, Paul Blanchon of the University
of Mexico says such a scenario is possible within
the next 100 years, reshaping coastlines while
also causing economic and social chaos. The
coral clearly shows that oceans rose 6.6 to 10
feet within 50 to 100 years, Blanchon writes.
Such a rise today due to melting of the Green-
land and Antarctic would inundate coastal cities
theSun | MONDAY APRIL 20 2009
India’s eunuchs avoid polls
over ‘third sex’ dilemma
NEW DELHI: India’s one million eunuchs face a
unique dilemma every election season – do they
stand in the men’s or women’s queue at polling
stations or stay away altogether?
In the past, eunuchs – the term used for cross-
dressers, pre- and post-operative transsexuals
known here as hijras – have largely abstained from
casting their ballots because they are unwilling to
identify themselves as male or female on voter
registration forms.
While some eunuchs do vote by listing them-
selves as female, many are pushing for an alterna-
tive or “third sex” option on identity cards, after
being granted the franchise in 1994.
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a prominent eunuch ac-
tivist and founder of NGO Astitva, which works with
sexual minorities, has never voted and refuses to
do so until there is a transgender option on identity
cards.
“It’s the question of the identity of our whole
community,” she said.
“In spite of so many years of independence we
haven’t got our own identity, our own place in the
constitution of India.”
Most eunuchs live on the outer fringes of society,
ostracised and excluded from decent job opportuni-
ties and reduced to begging at traffic junctions in
major cities or working in the sex trade.
Despite the stigma surrounding them, a cam-
paign to recognise eunuchs as a third sex has
yielded some results.
They can now write “E” for eunuch on passports
and on certain government forms, but the quest for
acceptance at the ballot box – where they have to
identify themselves as male or female – still eludes
them in culturally conservative India.
“There has been quite a bit of progress so
structurally the only thing that comes in is gender
politics,” said Ashok Row Kavi, chairman of the
Humsafar Trust, a male sexual health NGO.
Eunuchs who want to contest in elections for
greater rights have come up against similar prob-
lems, even though several have been elected to
public office as women. – AFP
like London, New York, Tokyo and Calcutta.
Earthquakes
A STRONG aftershock of Italy’s devastating April
6 temblor rocked a wide area, including Rome,
65 miles away. The 4.8 magnitude shaking was
one of around 100,000 aftershocks that have
occurred since the initial jolt.
• Earth movements were also felt in western
Mexico, southern Peru, the Big Island of Hawaii,
Indonesia’s Sulawesi island and western India.
Bengal cyclone
AN area of disturbed weather swirling over the
western Bay of Bengal collected into Cyclone
Bijli just off the coast of India. – Universal Press
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