Activists Await Bush at Pacific Summit in Chile

A 29-year-old math teacher who goes by the name Patricio says that as soon as President Bush arrives in this South American capital Friday, the fighting will begin.

“We’ll knock down some barriers, set some fires, paint some graffiti,” said the anti-globalization activist who declined to provide his real name. “We are going to go where the police don’t want us to go.”

Bush is traveling here for the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, his first trip abroad since his reelection and his first official visit to this continent. Twenty other world leaders will attend the weekend summit, including Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

For Chilean officials, the summit is a kind of coming-out party affirming their nation’s status as South America’s most dynamic economy. In January, Chile became the first country on the continent to enter into a free-trade agreement with the United States.

“Just the fact that 21 leaders will be here, along with the 500 corporate chiefs, and that we will contribute to the success of the World Trade Organization and the completion of the Doha Round [of free-trade talks] already makes the summit a triumph,” Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker told reporters this week.

But the summit also will highlight the antipathy many Chileans feel toward Bush, a leader widely seen here as a symbol of America’s unchecked dominion over world affairs.

A number of anti-Bush and anti-globalization protests are planned. On Wednesday, President Ricardo Lagos’ government took the unusual step of announcing that Bush would have diplomatic immunity during his visit. The declaration was made after activists filed a court complaint against Bush, claiming he and other U.S. officials were guilty of war crimes in Iraq.

“It is not possible that our president is going to meet this criminal Bush and shake his hand in an official state visit,” said Fernando Ortiz, a top official in the Humanist Party and the leftist PODEMOS political alliance and one of the activists behind the complaint against Bush. “Lagos is going to betray the Chilean people.”

Under Chilean law, local courts can take measures to enforce compliance with international treaties to which Chile is a signatory, including the Geneva Convention and the Convention Against Torture. Ortiz said the Humanist Party complaint was rejected by a lower court judge but was on appeal.

“We want [Bush] to be ordered to appear before a judge and answer to the complaint,” Ortiz said. “If he does not show up, the judge should issue an arrest warrant.”

Ortiz acknowledged that the complaint had little chance of success, noting that when he presented it at court, several clerks responded with howls of laughter when they saw the list of the accused, which in addition to Bush included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others.

“I believe you can’t sit back and do nothing,” Ortiz said. “It’s a question of morality.”

For the Chilean business community, such protests are political sideshows that have distracted from what they believe is the real story of the APEC summit: that their country is taking another step toward becoming part of the First World.

“Hopefully our public and private sectors will make this encounter of the Asian and Pacific economies a turning point in which we strengthen our struggle for a technologically advanced Chile,” Edgar Witt, general director of Hewlett-Packard Chile, wrote in a newspaper column here Wednesday.

Among the topics likely to be discussed at the forum are U.S. interest rates and the value of China’s currency. Diplomats will draft a nonbinding declaration of trade goals, and leaders will hold a series of bilateral talks -- Bush, for example, will meet separately with Putin and Hu, among others.

To keep any protests in check, the Chilean government has deployed thousands of additional police officers to patrol strategic points in Santiago and the air force is enforcing new restrictions in the airspace around the city. Friday has been declared a holiday in the capital, with people urged to stay home.

At the international airport, immigration officials reportedly have been given a “black list” of anti-globalization activists who will be denied entry into the country.

According to news reports here, the list is composed of people known to “espouse doctrines that intend to alter or destroy the social order or the government through violence.”

On Wednesday, police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse about 200 demonstrators at a small, unauthorized protest in downtown Santiago. Police arrested 120 people, many of them high school students who were trying to block one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.

The largest protest is scheduled for Friday, with organizers hoping to bring tens of thousands of people out on the streets of Santiago.

“We are betting on a massive response,” said Victoria Oyarzun, a coordinator of the anti-APEC coalition here. She referred to Bush as a “terrorist” whose invasion of Iraq and handling of the war had outraged Chileans.

The summit concludes Sunday. Bush is scheduled to leave Chile on Monday, after a state visit with Lagos at the La Moneda palace.