Venezuelan Calls on Bush to Treat Latins as Partners

Carlos Andres Perez, a center-left advocate of Third World causes, returned to the presidency of Venezuela on Thursday with an appeal to the Bush Administration to treat Latin Americans as partners in a search for solutions to guerrilla conflicts and unpayable foreign debts.

“The new government of the United States has the immense and challenging possibility of recognizing our continent as an open zone of fertile dialogue, even on those issues that in the recent past have been fiery points of conflict,” Perez said in an inaugural address attended by 22 visiting heads of government, half of them from Latin America.

“The possibility of a profound encounter between the United States and Latin America will be strengthened to the extent that we recognize each other as firm friends and not in anti-historic relations of subordination.”

While devoid of specific proposals, the 40-minute speech was notable because it signaled the 66-year-old leader’s intent to make his presidency a platform for leadership on such diverse concerns as relief for debtor nations, peace in Central America and stable oil prices.

Anticipating Perez’s activism, a wide range of regional leaders flocked here to meet with the Venezuelan and also to lobby for changes in Washington’s treatment of them. Many said they hope that President Bush will discard his predecessor’s obsession with toppling Nicaragua’s Sandinista rulers and concentrate instead on the region’s larger countries.

Vice President Dan Quayle, who met with Perez on Wednesday and represented the United States at his inauguration, gave only broad outlines of the regional policy that he said Bush’s aides are still shaping. But he called Perez’s speech “encouraging” and said its “call for respect and equality is on target.”

“Carlos Andres Perez is going to be a force and a power in this hemisphere and the world,” Quayle told reporters. “People will look to him. . . . We are going to continue our dialogue with him.”

Seated six chairs away from Quayle at the indoor ceremony was President Fidel Castro of Cuba, who once supported leftist guerrillas here. Also on hand were President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, invited civilian leaders of armed rebel movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, oil ministers of five nations and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.

Perez, a social democrat, achieved renown with populist policies during his previous presidency, from 1974 to 1979. He nationalized foreign petroleum companies and took part in efforts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to raise world oil prices. He supported the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and often criticized U.S. policy.

Barred by the constitution from serving again for a decade, he won a sweeping electoral victory last December, becoming the first Venezuelan in three decades of democracy to make such a comeback. He succeeded Jaime Lusinchi, a member of his Democratic Action party, for a five-year term.

Even before his election, Perez began a series of trips to the Middle East, the Soviet Union, Western Europe and Japan. He met with Bush in Washington in mid-December.

Perez said Thursday that he had found general approval for his idea of a meeting of presidents of OPEC nations, the first such meeting in 13 years, to map pricing and production strategies for the 1990s.

Besides voicing support for diplomatic efforts to end guerrilla conflicts in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Perez pledged to work for “the recovery of the democratic process in Panama,” where U.S. officials fear that Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, the military strongman, will rig the May 7 elections.

Perez focused his most passionate remarks on what he called “the old dream of Simon Bolivar” of a united Latin America. He said the “time is ripe” for a regional approach in negotiations with foreign creditors.

“I have insisted many times that the future of our peoples, our countries, cannot be mortgaged by (the obligation) to pay an onerous debt under intolerable conditions,” he said, drawing applause from the audience representing 86 countries.

Perez noted that seven Latin American finance ministers have sent a document to the Group of Seven industrialized nations last month with suggestions for reducing the region’s $420-billion foreign debt.

“The responsibility for finding definitive solutions to this crisis falls equally on the United States, the rest of the industrialized countries and Latin America,” he said. “Each country cannot stand alone against a formidable cartel of creditors that makes its schemes and interests prevail.”

Perez’s debt initiative comes a month after Venezuela, long considered a model debtor nation, was forced to suspend principal payments on nearly all of its $30.3-billion debt because of a $6-billion drop in its oil revenues last year.

Quayle said he discussed debt with Perez and President Jose Sarney of Brazil, the region’s largest debtor, but was not ready to offer details of the “new look” at the issue that Bush promised last month.

“The debt is a very important problem to a lot of countries, and we have gotten that message loud and clear,” Quayle said.

During his two days here, Quayle also met with Presidents Virgilio Barco Vargas of Colombia, Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo of Guatemala and Alan Garcia of Peru. He said the separate meetings were “very useful--they will be helpful in the formulation of a policy.”

The vice president avoided contact, however, with Cuba’s Castro and Nicaragua’s Ortega. He did not comment on Ortega’s new proposal for the disarmament and voluntary repatriation to Nicaragua of Contra guerrillas camped in Honduras.

He did criticize former President Jimmy Carter for meeting with Ortega here Wednesday to discuss the proposal.

“Obviously, when you have a former President meeting with a head of state that we don’t meet with, it has the chance of complicating matters,” Quayle said.

He said that “we’ve seen a regression” of the political climate in Nicaragua since Congress cut off military aid to the Contras a year ago.

“But we’re going to give the diplomatic route a chance,” he said, “and we hope to see progress.”

He insisted that Ortega resume talks with the Contras--something the Sandinista leader has ruled out.