The FTAA Deception

According to its proponents, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, will create a "free trade" area encompassing the entire hemisphere -- from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. According to President Bush, the FTAA, which is scheduled for completion next year, would "make our hemisphere the largest free-trade area in the world, encompassing 34 countries and 800 million people." The result would be new export markets for American goods and a corresponding increase in our national prosperity and the standard of living throughout the hemisphere.

At least, that's the story. It's an attractive one, and to many a persuasive one. Many Europeans eagerly embraced an earlier version of the same story about the European Common Market, now known as the European Union. Sold to the public as a free-trade pact, the European Union is rapidly taking shape as a centralized socialist mega-state.

As the EU takes form, citizens of once free and independent European nations are surrendering their sovereignty, as well as their currencies, and their domestic laws.

Citizens of Great Britain, whose heritage of liberty under law spans nearly eight centuries -- a heritage that we share -- are learning that EU membership would mean the loss of critical guarantees of individual rights. For example: Under the EU, British citizens could find themselves arraigned in foreign courts to be tried for offenses not recognized by British law.

The EU's currency, the euro, has supplanted most European currencies. As EU supporter Lionel Stoleru wrote more than a decade ago, "Money is the key link which will transform economic union into a political union. Take the central bank to a supra-national level and the national balance of powers collapses…." In other words, monetary union is a prelude to political union, with all of Europe's formerly free nations ruled by one elite.

Irish journalist Vincent Browne is among those who have denounced this effort to place Europe under the heel of a centralized ruling elite. "[W]ith the European Union, Europe has moved back towards oligarchy, which, by definition, is outside any process of meaningful accountability to the people as a whole," Browne observes. And this conquest has been carried out by deception, rather than military occupation. The UK's involvement in the EU offers a useful illustration of this deception at work.

In 1970, the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath applied for membership in the European Common Market, as the entity was then known. Heath and his associates assured the British public and Parliament that the Common Market was simply a free trade arrangement intended to produce new export markets for British goods, and increased prosperity for all.

"There will not be a blueprint for a federal Europe," Heath told the House of Commons on February 25, 1970. A White Paper issued by Heath two years later declared: "There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty." Nearly two decades later, after Britain was firmly committed to European unification, Heath could afford to be candid. During a November 1, 1991 interview with the BBC, Heath was asked: "The single currency; a United States of Europe; was that in your mind when you took Britain in?" "Of course, yes," Heath eagerly replied -- thereby indicting himself as a liar and a traitor.

The year 2000 brought about the release of hundreds of previously classified documents describing the British government's deviousness and duplicity in committing that nation to a unified Europe. According to British journalist Christopher Booker: "What these papers revealed more starkly than ever before was just how deliberately the Heath Government and the Foreign Office set out to conceal from the British people the Common Market’s true purpose. They were fully aware that it was intended to be merely the first step towards creating a politically united Europe, but they were determined to hide this away from view."

Booker continues: "For 40 years, British politicians have consistently tried to portray [the Common Market and EU] to their fellow-citizens as little more than an economic arrangement: a kind of free-trading area primarily concerned with creating jobs and prosperity."

But from the very beginning, the European Union was intended to become a socialist regional government, functioning as an administrative unit of a UN-based global government. This was laid out with commendable candor in the Resolutions on Political Union at the 1948 Congress of Europe: "The creation of a United Europe must be regarded as an essential step towards the creation of a United World."

Building a single government for the entire world -- thereby placing total power in the hands of a few -- is an ambitious undertaking. One of those openly pursuing that objective is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a co-founder of the Trilateral Commission. In a 1995 address, Brzezinski pointed out: "We cannot leap into world government in one quick step…. [T]he precondition for eventual globalization -- genuine globalization -- is progressive regionalization, because thereby we move to larger, more stable, more cooperative units."

The FTAA is designed to be nothing less than the Western Hemisphere counterpart to the European Union. The FTAA would enlarge upon the so-called North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, under which the United States, Canada, and Mexico have begun the process of merging our economies and political systems.

In a 2002 address in Madrid, Spain, Mexican President Vicente Fox was remarkably blunt in his description of the purposes to be served by NAFTA and the FTAA: "Eventually our long-range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada, our other regional partner, an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union."

Another crucial illustration of this process is found in the "Declaration of Principles" signed at the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, where the first outline of the FTAA was created. In that document, American heads of state, including then-president Bill Clinton, attested: "We are determined to consolidate and advance closer bonds of cooperation.... We reiterate our firm adherence to the principles of international law and the purposes and principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter…."

Obviously, political and economic consolidation of this hemisphere's nations isn't necessary in order for free trade to occur. Clearly, the FTAA's promoters are following the same game plan used successfully in Europe by using the prospect of free trade and increased prosperity to delude the public into supporting the creation of a continent-spanning mega-state -- a building block for a UN-dominated world.

It's important to remember that free trade is an exchange of goods and services between two parties, unhampered by government intervention. Those involved may be neighbors, citizens of the same country, or citizens of different countries. And in order for this exchange to occur, the benefits to each party must outweigh the costs -- or else the transaction won't take place.

Furthermore, genuine free trade has the effect of minimizing government's role. Where free trade takes place, society is shaped by free choices made by individuals, rather than by the heavy-handed intervention of those who want to mold it, by force, in a fashion they choose. Simply put, free trade cannot co-exist with large, interventionist government -- and the reverse of that statement is true as well.

With this in mind, it's clear that NAFTA -- the forerunner of the FTAA -- deserves to be called a "free trade" agreement in the same sense that Communist East Germany deserved to be called the German Democratic People's Republic.

To accomplish NAFTA's stated intention -- lowering government barriers to trade -- a very brief document would be necessary. Yet the text of the basic NAFTA accord devours hundreds of pages and is divided into two thick, heavy volumes. Much of the text is devoted to a blueprint for a large, cumbersome international regulatory bureaucracy. Furthermore, at several places the agreement anticipates the creation of additional "annexes" that would create even more layers of international bureaucracy.

The NAFTA pact called for creation of 30 new international government committees, subcommittees, councils, working groups, and subgroups. It also mandated the creation of a Free Trade Council that would function as a continental government-in-waiting with enormous discretionary powers. Provision was also made for numerous additional permanent committees, various "working groups," subcommittees, subgroups, and other bureaucratic bodies whose enactments would supposedly have the force of law.

Rather than relieving the burden of regulation that impedes genuine free trade, NAFTA internationalized the regulatory apparatus -- thereby making it less accountable to the U.S. citizens affected by those regulatory decisions.

NAFTA also led to the creation of new taxpayer-funded international financial bodies.

When NAFTA's implementing legislation was passed in 1993, it included a provision creating the North American Development Bank, a financial institution modeled on the UN-aligned World Bank. Another side agreement to NAFTA created the North American Financial Group, which was intended to "stabilize" exchange rates among the three signatory countries. In practice, however, both of those financial institutions have served as slush funds for politically protected interests, particularly in Mexico.

As noted earlier, true free trade requires a reduction in, or abolition of, government regulations. However, NAFTA -- which, once again, is the forerunner to the FTAA -- is designed to ramp up regulations throughout North America. This was admitted by former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor in August 1993. Under NAFTA, Kantor observed, "No nation can lower labor or environmental standards, only raise them, and all states and provinces can enact even more stringent measures…."

This process is often called "upward harmonization" -- the creation of a socialist multi-national government on the installment plan. NAFTA's regulatory bodies, which are completely unaccountable to American citizens, are constantly urged by radical non-governmental organizations to increase the regulatory burden on productive businesses throughout North America.

Once again, NAFTA is just a preview -- a down-payment -- on the continent-wide regime that would be created through the FTAA.

"Upward harmonization" of government power inevitably produces a corresponding phenomenon -- "downward harmonization" of living standards, sometimes called the "race to the bottom." As governing elites pool their power across borders, those they rule lose a corresponding amount of freedom and prosperity. This is happening already under NAFTA as over-regulated American industries lose market share to less expensive competitors abroad.

On the tenth anniversary of the NAFTA accord, the Christian Science Monitor noted that the agreement, "while opening the doors for U.S. exports and helping Americans get low-cost consumer goods, has also shaken entire industries from textiles to cars."

As our economy has been merged with socialist Canada and corrupt Mexico, "NAFTA has displaced American workers and devastated entire towns. It's evident from the job-training centers in southern Texas to the `NAFTA ghost towns' of North Carolina, with their shuttered textile plants."

Economist Jorge Gonzalez of San Antonio's Trinity University claims that NAFTA has done "exactly what it is supposed to do…. We've basically taken two economies with vastly different resources [those of the U.S. and Mexico] and integrated them. That helps the whole region become more competitive." Economist Russell Roberts of George Mason University agrees that the political benefits of integrating North America more than compensate for the hardships NAFTA has inflicted on American workers: "The bottom line is this -- NAFTA has caused hardship for some Americans in certain sectors, but it's made for a more stable and integrated Mexican political system -- and that's a real good thing for the world."

Scant comfort such glib assessments will provide to Americans whose lucrative manufacturing jobs have fled the country. Breadwinners seeking to provide a decent standard of living for their families, and perhaps even leave an inheritance for their children, have little interest in regional "competitiveness," or in helping Mexico become "stable and integrated." But they are the ones paying the price of the Power Elite's grand designs.

And it's important to recognize that while American workers have endured hardships as a result of NAFTA, the political class is prospering as never before. Indeed, the Power Elite benefits directly by inducing "downward harmonization" on the middle class. This is illustrated by the existence of the so-called "Trade Adjustment Assistance" program -- a $1.3 billion federal welfare program for Americans who lose their jobs as a result of NAFTA and other socialist "free trade" initiatives.

Once again, all of this is merely the faintest foretaste of what the FTAA will do to our economy -- if the pact goes through as planned.

President Bush's plan to grant amnesty to an estimated 6-12 million illegal aliens underscores another element of the FTAA drive: The de facto abolition of our southern border with Mexico. Amnesty was a key agenda item during the 2001 visit of Vicente Fox to the U.S., and it may already have been implemented were it not for the 9-11 terrorist attacks -- which offered a tragic and bloody illustration of the costs of open borders.

President Bush's conduct during the 2001 summit with Fox provoked raised eyebrows from several commentators. At every opportunity, Mr. Bush appeared next to Fox at gatherings of Mexican-Americans; just as frequently, Mr. Bush expressed a desire to make it easier for Mexicans to come to the U.S., and to lavish taxpayer aid on Mexican business interests.

"There are people in Mexico who’ve got children, who worry about where they’re going to get their next meal from," asserted the president in a typical speech during Fox's visit.

"And they’re going to come to the United States.... That’s a simple fact. And we’ve got to respect that...." Apparently, Mr. Bush had forgotten that he had been elected to look after American interests, and to see that our nation's laws -- including those dealing with immigration -- be faithfully executed.

Bush's actions prompted Newsweek commentator Howard Fineman to observe: "Whatever else George W. Bush does, or doesn’t do, he has earned a place in history as the first American president to place Hispanic voters at the center of politics, and the first to view the land between Canada and Guatemala as one. It makes sense, if you think about it: Texas, long ago and far away, was part of Mexico. Now a Texan is trying to reassemble the Old Country, and then some."

A September 7, 2001 commentary by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution presented an even more pointed description of the agenda being followed by both Fox and Bush. Mexico's President Fox, commented the paper, "envisions a North American economic alliance that will make the border between the United States and Mexico as unrestricted as the one between Tennessee and Georgia….. [Furthermore, continued the paper,] The ultimate goal of any White House policy ought to be a North American economic and political alliance similar in scope and ambition to the European Union. Unlike the varied landscapes and cultures of European Union members, the United States, Canada and Mexico already share a great deal in common, and language is not as great a barrier. President Bush, for example, is quite comfortable with the blended Mexican-Anglo culture forged in the border states of Texas, California and Arizona."

Astonishing as it may seem, Mexico's Vicente Fox spent several days in the Fall of 2003 lobbying American officials in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico on behalf of amnesty for illegal Mexican immigrants. "We share nation and language," Fox told the New Mexico legislature. "In addition to our geographical vicinity, we are united by inseparable bonds, history, values and interests.... We must join together.... You need Mexico and Mexicans, and we need you."

In a joint press conference with President Bush on January 12, 2004, Fox applauded the proposed amnesty as a good first step. In remarks to the Mexican press, however, both Fox and his underlings made it clear that the Bush proposal is merely a first step. According to Mexico's secretary of Foreign Relations, Luis Ernesto Derbez, "the goal is a total and complete program that protects those [Mexicans] in the United States and those who aspire to go there."

The January 12, 2004 press conference, significantly, was part of a special Summit of the Americas, an event involving heads of state from the nations slated to be absorbed into the FTAA. During that press conference Fox pointedly used the term "migration" to refer to the Bush plan, referring variously to "that migration topic," "the migration matters," "this migration proposal," the "migration flow," and so on. The proper term to describe movement of people across an international border is either immigration (entering) or emigration (leaving); "migration" refers to movement of people within national boundaries.

It's also worthy of remark that at the same press conference Fox also referred to "the leaders of the countries of America" — rather than to national leaders of separate and independent nations.

That is to say that Vicente Fox is already acting and speaking as if our nations have been amalgamated into one hemispheric super-state. And although he has been less candid than Fox, George W. Bush's actions reflect that same mindset.

Consolidating the nations of this hemisphere into a regional bloc has long been a goal of immensely powerful figures. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a member of the executive committee of the Trilateral Commission and a longtime power in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) -- the two most prominent and influential globalist organizations -- stated in a 1993 Los Angeles Times op-ed column that NAFTA "will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War...." NAFTA, Kissinger admitted, "is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system."

David Rockefeller, former CFR chairman and co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, went so far as to say in the Wall Street Journal that he didn't "think that 'criminal' would be too strong a word to describe ... rejecting NAFTA…. Everything is in place -- after 500 years -- to build a true 'new world' in the Western Hemisphere."

We can already see the dire auguries of the new world these insiders are seeking to create. They are the shuttered textile mills of North and South Carolina, and the foreclosure notices that paper the walls of many courthouses as factory workers find their jobs "out-sourced" to Mexico, or points beyond. We see portents of amalgamation with Mexico in the rampant crime, disease, and social turmoil that typify border towns inundated with illegal immigrants. The tightening grip of environmental and workplace regulations suffocating our business sector, and driving jobs abroad, offers another grim foretaste of the world we would know if the plans for regional -- and eventually global -- government become a reality.

We can also see our future in the plight of patriots in Europe as they see their laws, currencies, and national independence abolished. Similar conditions will prevail in this hemisphere if the FTAA comes into being. Eventually, Americans would find that they are powerless to affect decisions being made by remote international bureaucracies that affect their lives, livelihoods, and liberties. The value of our currency, the scope of regulatory burdens on our businesses, the amount we pay in taxes -- all of these decisions would be made by distant, unaccountable bureaucrats whose job is to administer policies handed down from the UN, rather than representing the interest of Americans.

This doesn't have to happen. There is still time to defeat the plans to submerge our nation in a hemispheric socialist monstrosity:

Remember, the EU came about through deception. If we want to preserve our liberty, prosperity, and independence, concerned Americans must act now to dispel the deceptions about the FTAA.

The origin of those quotes is the charter for the Organization of American States. It is the parliment that sponsors the Summit of the Americas, where the President and elites go to make the decisions about our country giving up our sovereignty our rights and our tax dollars.

The organization of American States is organized like a federal government, like the EU, it has franken privileges in all the member states, it is subordinate only to international law.

Americans don't know why our president goes down to Mexico for these summits because no one reports on it. They give two speeches, one in English for the Americans who are trying to figure out whats going on down there, and one in Spanish, which is a completely different speech, agreeing to provide social security, setting up a program (illegal alien amnesty)for 'migrants' to travel freely into the United States, illegal alien drivers licenses-- all these things have been directives in past Summits of the Americas.

http://www.oas.org/main/main.asp?sLang=E&sLink=../../documents/eng/oasinbrief.asp

Summit of the Americas Pushes Revolutionary Agenda

By The New American Source: The New American, February 9, 2004

You’d never guess it from the ho-hum reportage of the Establishment press, but the recently concluded Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico, was a revolutionary event of major magnitude. The two-day summit (January 12-13) attended by President Bush marked another step forward in a long-term agenda to abolish national borders and merge the countries of the Western Hemisphere into a regional Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The general spin by most of the media analysts is that the conference hosted by Mexican President Vicente Fox did not accomplish much, ending with a harmless declaration but little consensus among the hemispheric leaders.

The truth is far different. The summit’s final statement, the Declaration of Nuevo Leon, commits the 34 nations to courses of action that have little or nothing to do with increasing trade — the ostensible purpose for creating the FTAA — but much to do with destroying our borders, soaking U.S. taxpayers for billions of dollars more in foreign aid, and promoting socialism throughout the hemisphere. The Declaration, for instance, included a call for tripling the funding of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for loans to Latin American businesses. The IDB — like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other multi-lateral lending agencies — has a horrible record of corruption and of funding statist projects that have saddled Latin Americans with a crushing debt burden. With a huge infusion of new IDB bribe money for business and political leaders, the FTAA architects will be able to overcome much of the current resistance south of the border to their merger plans.

The Declaration is also rife with commitments and pledges to adopt more than a dozen United Nations conventions and protocols; implement the socialist "mandates" of the UN Millennium Summit; and increase government "investment" in health, education, welfare, employment training, and "social safety nets." One of the most radical elements of the Declaration is its commitment to "the full protection of the human rights of all migrants, including migratory workers and their families." "We support," says the document, "the adoption of programs for orderly migration as a factor of economic and social development." President Vicente Fox has been the most outspoken Latin American leader in pushing this issue and has not been the least bit shy about demanding the same "rights" as U.S. citizens (including the "right" to welfare, health care, social security and education benefits) for Mexicans residing illegally in the United States. Incredibly, President Bush has been one of Vicente Fox’s biggest supporters on this score, and at Monterrey he won the Mexican president’s endorsement for the new Bush immigration plan that would shred our borders and swamp the U.S. with millions of new "migrants."

"Harmonizing" Our Decline - (Harmonization) is an updated version of Karl Marx’s classic Communist formula: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. In this instance, the United States imports Mexico’s surplus poverty, while Mexico — because of its lower wage costs — imports America’s industrial jobs. While this may result in a modest increase in the average Mexican standard of living — from near-serfdom to a higher grade of peonage — it will, if left unchecked, terminate America’s middle class.

Pauperizing the U.S.

U.S.-Mexico harmonization received a boost during the 2001 Bush-Fox summit as the two presidents laid the groundwork for the so-called "Partnership for Prosperity" (PfP) — an initiative designed to use American tax dollars to build Mexico’s manufacturing sector. Like most international socialist undertakings of this sort, the PfP was formally inaugurated at a UN global conference — specifically, the March 2002 UN foreign aid conference in Monterrey, Mexico. According to the U.S. State Department, PfP’s action plan calls for U.S. assistance in Mexico to boost investment in housing and commercial infrastructure to boost Mexican productivity.

A key outgrowth of the PfP was a bilateral agreement signed last June to permit the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) "to offer all its programs and services in Mexico...." OPIC was established by Congress to help U.S. companies invest overseas by granting direct loans or loan guarantees for investments and extending insurance to cover the risks of investment.

In the June issue of OPIC News, CEO Peter S. Watson boasted that the bilateral agreement with Mexico "will help to further unleash the entrepreneurial capacity of Mexican businesses by mobilizing U.S. capital, and consequently bring important developmental benefits to the Mexican people.... [It] will also allow OPIC to work freely along with its sister agencies, the US Trade and Development Agency and the Export Import Bank of the US, in providing investment support in Mexico...."

In brief, OPIC and its sister agencies will use taxpayer money, and the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, to promote the relocation of even more manufacturing jobs from the U.S. to Mexico. But Mexico is hardly the only beneficiary of the federal government’s treacherous generosity.

The July 2002 OPIC News reported: "OPIC intends to support a $100 million private equity fund to stimulate investment in Russia and surrounding regions." According to Watson, that fund will "contribute importantly to President Bush’s vision for accelerated economic growth in Russia and its neighboring states."

Watson’s predecessor at OPIC, George Munoz, pointed out in his January 2001 "Farewell Address" that the "forces of globalization … have put OPIC front and center of our government’s economic foreign policy.... Whether it was Russia, Africa, Central America, or Vietnam, OPIC played a crucial role in the development of U.S. foreign policy."

That policy could be reasonably described as deliberately pauperizing our country by wiping out its manufacturing base. And OPIC’s sister organizations, particularly the Export-Import Bank, are doing their part as well. Scarcely a week goes by without the Ex-Im Bank holding an "export symposium" in a major U.S. city — an event intended to evangelize on behalf of taxpayer-subsidized outsourcing of manufacturing to foreign countries.

The Pan American Union was the precursor to the OAS.
David Rockefeller founded the Councilof the Americas which acts as an advisor to the OAS.

Vice President Dick Cheney
Council of the Americas Conference
Monday, May 6, 2002
Washington D.C.

Good afternoon, and thank you all very much. It's a pleasure to welcome all of you to this important conference, especially those who have come from abroad.

I bring greetings from President Bush. He and I count many friends in the Council of the Americas, including your distinguished founding member, David Rockefeller. The Rockefeller family has a long history of strengthening the bonds of friendship throughout the Western Hemisphere -- going back to the 1940s, when my predecessor, Nelson Rockefeller, served in this department as assistant secretary for Latin American Affairs. In organizing the Council in 1965, David and his colleagues were among the first to grasp the enormous possibilities for economic and political progress throughout the Americas.

In the 37 years since then, many of those possibilities have been realized. In 1965, Latin America had few free-market economies, and only a handful of democracies. Today, 34 of the 35 nations in the hemisphere have elected leaders. Just one dictator remains, and the world long ago lost all interest in his five-year plans and four-hour speeches.

Progress in the Americas has often come slowly, and at times painfully. Yet in two generations' time, the direction of history has changed fundamentally, and for the better. Where dictatorships failed throughout Latin America, the institutions of freedom have succeeded. Where state-directed economies once improved life only for elite classes, free markets are bringing new hope and rising incomes to millions.

Our administration's central goal for the Americas is to continue the momentum of progress -- to build a hemisphere that lives in liberty, trades in freedom, and grows in prosperity. The future of our nation is closely tied to the success and security of our closest neighbors. Their problems -- from the drug trade to poverty -- create problems for America. And their prosperity contributes to our own. This hemisphere is the neighborhood we live in, and as the president has said, "the best foreign policy begins with making sure your own neighborhood is free and democratic and peaceful."
...
The Council of the Americas has been crucial in bringing us to this moment, and I know that we can count on your wisdom and commitment in completing the great work that lies ahead.

Thank you very much.

COLIN POWELL CALLS FOR SUSTAINED US COMMITMENT TO THE AMERICAS
AT COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS WASHINGTON CONFERENCE

Washington, DC - April 29, 2003 – For the third consecutive year, US Secretary of State Colin Powell met with prominent government and business leaders on Monday at the US State Department for the Council of the Americas annual Washington Conference. Secretary Powell called for a strengthening of free markets, democracy, and rule of law throughout the Western Hemisphere stating, "progress [in the Americas] relies on partnerships between different governments, between governments and their citizens, and between governments and business."

Secretary Powell further noted, "In the Council of the Americas, the governments of the Americas have a wonderful partner for progress." The Council of the Americas is a business organization whose members share a common commitment to free trade and open markets throughout the Americas, and was a critical force in the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trade Promotion Authority for the President in 2002, and continues to work in support of the US commitment to free trade.

Same thing is happening in Africa-- They are calling it: the
Organization of African Unity ir OAU. Sounds a little familiar doesn't it?

How much do African leaders really want to unite?
By Barnaby Phillips in Lome

One of the most important subjects on the agenda at summit in Togo is the proposal to form an African Union - a pan-African body with strong political and economic ties intended to eventually take the place of the current Organisation of African Unity.

Colonel Gaddafi dreams of African unity

African leaders fear their continent is becoming increasingly powerless in a tough global economic environment.

Many believe that unless Africa can talk and act with greater cohesion, it will continue to be virtually ignored by the richer countries.

Beyond this general consensus, which is shared by all the 30 or so heads of state in Lome, there are considerable differences about what is the best way to proceed.

Gaddafi for union

At one end of the spectrum is Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who has grabbed much of the attention here.

Togo's President Eyadema supports the idea publicly

Colonel Gaddafi raised the idea of an African Union, loosely modelled on its European counterpart, at an extraordinary summit in Libya last year.

His ambition is that the union should come into existence, in some form, in 2001.

Colonel Gaddafi can count on support for this idea from several small countries in Africa, like Burkina Faso and Togo, who have benefited from his financial largesse.

Regional groupings

But some of the more powerful African countries are wary of losing their own regional influence and concerned at any initiative that would weaken their sovereignty or ability to act independently.

Nigeria, for example, enjoys its role as the dominant force in the existing West African grouping, the Economic Community of West Afrian States, Ecowas.

But President Obasanjo of Nigeria does not

In recent years Ecowas has made significant progress in easing travel restrictions in West Africa, and has started the process of establishing a single West African currency.

In southern Africa, South Africa enjoys a similarly important role in SADC, the Southern African Development Community.

Although SADC's effectiveness has been diminished in recent years, in part because of political differences between South Africa and Zimbabwe, many southern Africans would prefer to work towards regional integration first, before looking at pan-African unity.

Likewise in East Africa, where Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have been working to revive the old East African Community, which collapsed in the mid-1970s because of political and ideological differences.

There are about 50 African states, and they trade far more with the rest of the world than they do with each other.

Despite Colonel Gaddafi's plans, its hard to see how an African Union will mean much in practical terms, at least in the short term.

But it is possible that new pan-African institutions, such as a parliament and a court of law, will come into existence in the next few years - possibly providing a basis for a more united Africa in the future.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/829060.stm

It looks like the UN document "our global neighborhood" is coming to pass. It predicted the creation of the European there is ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian states Union, they accomplished the Organization of African Unity, which have declared:

Whether in Cambodia or in East Timor, whether in the South China Sea or on nuclear weapons and disarmament, whether in the settlement of disputes or on general codes of international behavior, ASEAN has always placed itself within the framework of the United Nations and its Charter, invoking its practices and precedents, measuring itself against its norms.

Hmmm, there's that catchy little phrase about the United Nations.

There's the Commonwealth of Independent States which is basicly the former soviet union.

That leaves the middle east. What would their regional goverment be called that operates under the framework of the United Nations? Here's a possibility:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the global inter- governmental Organization of Islamic States. As of December 1998 it comprises 56 members States and 4 observer States. The Organization aims at promoting solidarity and cooperation among all its members in the political, economic and social spheres. It cooperates with the United Nations and other international organizations in fostering peace, in promoting social and economic development, in combating ethnic or racial intolerance and in eliminating colonialism in all forms and manifestations. It plays an active role in international efforts aimed at strengthening peace, security and justice throughout the world. The OIC is the world's second largest intergovernmental organization after the United Nations in which it has observer status on a reciprocal basis. All member States of the OIC are also member States of the United Nations.

Thats it. Nations gone, regional governments report to the framework of the United Nations.

Is it possible that the United States could still be the fly in the ointment? Is there hope for us?

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