SUNS  4303 Friday 16 October 1998


IBERO-AMERICA: SUMMIT TO FOCUS ON REGULATING GLOBALISATION

Oporto, Portugal, Oct 14 (IPS/Tito Drago) -- The key focus of the eighth annual Ibero-American Summit, which will draw 23 heads of state and government from Latin America, Spain and Portugal to this city from Oct. 17-18, will be how to regulate globalisation.

It was decided to make the question of globalisation and the search for solutions to a problem that is overwhelming countries, regions, markets, governments and international bodies the key theme at this year's summit a year ago on Venezuela's Margarita Island.

The question of globalisation and a vindication of the role of the state are constant underlying themes in the thinking of presidents, other politicians and Ibero-American experts set forth in the book "Globa-Regulation; the Challenge of the 21st Century", published on the occasion of the summit. Copies are to be distributed to all participants.

According to the book's contributors, the years in which it looked like the "neo-liberal" model taken to its last consequences had succeeded in eliminating the role of the state, and only market
forces would govern society, have been left behind.

While there may be differences regarding what the state should or should not do, it is taken as indisputable that the state does have a social role to play.

Chilean President Eduardo Frei points out that while the notion of the "maximalist" state reigned in the 1970s and that of the "minimalist" state in the 1980s, today it is necessary to speak of a capable, efficient or competent state.

Frei writes that "an essential function of the state is that of actively ensuring, through explicit, ongoing strategies and programmes, the quality of the system as a whole and, through
affirmative action programmes, equity."

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, states frankly that "the global process must be regulated." Globalisation "poses the need for the tranformation of national states, their
functions and rules of action," he adds.

To succumb and consider the transformation "a surrender, and seek isolation, is not the best way to meet the 21st century, because it would mean assuming fear as government," Guterres maintains.

The prime minister says the coming century will be the century "of international public institutions, which subordinated to democratic ethical values and human solidarity will enable states to be
provided with the instruments with which to confront and reap benefits from the new era, the era of globalisation."

The present situation is disturbing, but not only in the most obvious aspect, the financial crisis which has spread from Asia, he states, pointing out that globalisation manifests itself with both positive and negative aspects above and beyond the economy and finances, extending to issues such as mass migration, drug trafficking, local and regional wars, the arms race and AIDS.

Uruguayan President Julio Sanguinetti stressed that humanism must accept technological and social changes, and bolster them in a positive sense. But in order to do so, "a new social contract will have to be imagined, and we must already start to think about the need to redefine the objectives of the state and the tasks of education."

Presidents Carlos Menem of Argentina and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil grant special attention to the need to further boost cooperation between the European Union and Latin America, in order to achieve better insertion in the global era.

Menem states that "cooperation and integration among sister countries and peoples is a need that has always been present in our history, but it has taken globalisation to make that need an
objective toward which we must direct all our energy."
Cardoso says it is paradoxical that globalisation has not eliminated, but rather given "new strength and new significance to the regional dimension of relations between countries."

Referring specifically to the Ibero-American summit and cooperation between Europe and Latin America, he underlines that Brazil "is determined to keep working to help make that trans-
Atlantic friendship an example of how two different regions, each with its own peculiarities, can walk hand-in-hand... By putting emphasis on our common interests...better conditions for confronting the challenges of the modern-day world can be achieved," he asserts.

Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio stresses that "globalisation and regional integration increasingly condition the evolution of our societies, affecting political, economic, social and cultural
systems."

The logic of economic efficiency "can never respond entirely to the legitimate longings of our societies for more harmonious development, improved equity and social justice. "It is the responsibility of the state to demonstrate, with concrete measures and actions, that it is the rules of democracy that are superimposed on the market, and not vice versa," Sampaio concludes.