MEXICO CITY - As they have every year for more than a decade, the heads of state meeting this weekend in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, for the XII Ibero-American Summit approved a lengthy final declaration that many of them don't have any intention of complying with, or of asking their colleagues to enforce. What a joke! Does it make sense for Spain, Portugal and the 21 Latin American countries that make up the Ibero-American community to continue with this annual exercise of political hypocrisy? Should they put out any statements at all, if they don't commit themselves to comply with them?

As a journalist who has covered most of the 12 Ibero-American summits -- and who has decided to skip them from now on, unless they get serious -- I have a hard time understanding how countries can spend time and money negotiating 50-page agreements filled with promises they don't intend to keep.

Let me give you an example: Since the 1996 Ibero-American summit in Vina del Mar, Chile, Cuba's president-for-life Fidel Castro has been signing -- every year -- the meeting's final declarations reaffirming the participating leaders' ``commitment to democracy, the rule of law and political pluralism.''

The Vina del Mar declaration, whose references to democracy and political pluralism have been left almost intact in the summits that followed, left no room for ambiguity. It said the presidents shared the conviction that ``freedom of expression, association and assembly, full access to information, and free, periodic and transparent elections are essential elements of democracy.''

At the time, everybody was thrilled by Castro's having signed that document. But eight years later, the Cuban dictator still bans opposition political parties, independent media and the Cuban people's right to exercise the few rights they have under their Socialist laws. Even after more than 10,000 Cubans on the island earlier this year exercised their constitutional right to sign a petition for the government and asked for a referendum on whether political freedoms should be allowed on the island, Castro has not even permitted publication of the petition in the country's media.

While Spain and several Latin American countries have asked Castro in recent Ibero-American summits to comply with his vow to allow political pluralism, they have never demanded compliance with the Vina del Mar declaration. Unlike United Nations resolutions, the Ibero-American summit's agreements carry no obligations to comply with them.

So what's the point of these meetings, I asked Spain's Secretary of State Miguel Angel Cortés, in a telephone interview. Spain, as the founder of the Ibero-American summits and an economic success story that is rightly seen as a role model for Latin America, plays a key role at these meetings.

CREATED `COMMUNITY'

Cortes said these summits have been a big success, among other things because over the past twelve years they have created an ''Ibero-American community'' made up of Spain, Portugal and Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin American countries.

Before 1991, there were many countries with a common language, but there was no concept of a community, he said. Nowadays, in addition to the annual summit of Ibero-American presidents, there are more than a dozen annual meetings of Ibero-American ministers of commerce, business people, university deans, public notaries and artists. These conferences are resulting in a growing number of professional and cultural exchanges, he said.

But Cortes conceded that the Ibero-American summits and their associated conferences badly need a follow-up structure. ''We should adapt the Ibero-American structures to the new reality,'' he said. ``We have meetings of Ibero-American university deans who agree on coordinating their curricula in order to facilitate student exchange programs, but the governments are not always acting on it. We must give a political response to this new reality.''

FOLLOW-UP PROPOSED

At this weekend summit, the presidents approved a Spain-sponsored proposal to create a task force led by Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to study whether to beef up a current Ibero-American Summit Coordination office, based in Madrid. The task force will have one year to decide whether that office should become permanent and have expanded powers.

That would be an excellent idea. Spain has a lot to offer to Latin America, if nothing else its example of how a country can triple its per capita income over three decades by achieving a greater integration with its richest neighbors to the north without losing its national identity.

If the Ibero-American summits create a permanent office with enough power to eventually enforce their annual declarations, they will have a great future. Otherwise, they will be just another example of expensive political tourism, and their final statements will continue to be a joke.

Source: The New Herald