Indebted Nations, Says Castro, Could Sink Ship That Is Earth

In issuing a rallying cry for Third World solidarity this week to more than 100 leaders and dignitaries gathered here from the world’s poorest and least-developed nations, Cuban President Fidel Castro offered a powerful image that framed the group’s mission.

Imagine planet Earth as a ship, the aging Communist leader told the first summit of the world’s have-nots.

“Trifling minorities are traveling in luxurious cabins furnished with the Internet, cell phones and access to global communication networks,” Castro declared, while “85% of the passengers on this ship are crowded together in its dirty hold suffering hunger, diseases and helplessness.

“This vessel is carrying too much injustice to remain afloat,” he added. And if it sank, “we would all sink with it.”

Castro’s rescue plan went well beyond the course the group charted for the future of the Third World in final documents signed here Friday.

He proposed the destruction of the International Monetary Fund, the cancellation of all Third World debt, a Nuremberg-style trial for those responsible for the new global economic order and a 1% tax on all speculative financial transactions worldwide to raise a $1-trillion fund for the Third World to direct for its development.

But the Cuban leader’s defiant spirit, shared by most at a gathering that represented 5 billion of the world’s 6 billion people, was the subtext of the summit’s final action plan, which the Group of 77 hopes will, at the very least, serve as a wake-up call for the world’s wealthy, developed nations. The group, named for its 77 originators, now has a membership of 133.

In closing its first heads of state meeting Friday, the G-77 and the 122 member states in attendance pledged to work toward canceling the Third World’s crushing foreign debt, cooperating more closely among themselves, pressing for a louder voice among First World nations and pushing for better access to high technology that could narrow the growing gap between the world’s rich and poor.

Beyond such lofty goals among nations as diverse as their continents and conflicting constitutions, analysts and diplomats here said, the summit’s greatest success was simply that it happened: The leaders of the world’s impoverished majority emerged from Castro’s cargo hold and stood shoulder to shoulder on deck.

Unity, in fact, was a key thread through the dozens of speeches in Havana’s modern Convention Palace by leaders ranging from Pakistani military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf to Nigeria’s elected president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

“If we quarrel about approaches to be made, then all will lose face,” declared Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid.

Speeches that called for better Third World access to First World markets, jobs and information technology to close a fast-growing global “digital divide” were accompanied by statistics to illustrate why the world’s wealthy nations should care about the mounting woes down below.

Castro called the Third World’s ballooning $2.5 trillion in foreign debt “a bomb ready to blow up the foundations of the world economy.” The world’s 1.2 billion people now living on less than $1 a day, other leaders stressed, fuel global instability and costly conflicts.

“Never has the world witnessed such massive disparities in international social and economic activities,” said Obasanjo, the summit’s chairman, in calling the phenomenon “a major threat to international peace and security.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who attended the summit as an observer and advisor, also stressed the dire need to close the global economic gap. But, in framing the U.N.’s new course to combat global poverty, Annan suggested that the leaders first address inequities at home.

Echoing a U.N. report released in New York last week that links a nation’s poverty to internal corruption and bad governance, Annan declared here that nations adhering to the rule of law, public accountability, independent judiciaries and basic democracy will invite international investment, development, stability and prosperity.

“Without them,” he said, “a nation will be unable to compete in the global economy.”