Sunday June 4 6:26 PM ET OAS Assembly Begins Monday
By TOM COHEN, Associated Press Writer
WINDSOR, Ontario (AP) - As hundreds of anti-free trade protesters chanted outside, Foreign ministers from the Organization of American States launched their annual assembly Sunday, expecting to focus on Peru's presidential election.
The Windsor protest - which was mirrored by another across the U.S. river border in Detroit - brought the OAS, which also deals with trade issues, face-to-face with the same movement that obstructed December's World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.
Suffocating security measures and hundreds of police in riot gear prevented demonstrators from crossing into a security zone set up within a 10-foot fence around several blocks in downtown Windsor.
Police sprayed two people with pepper spray when a group tried to climb the fence. There were no other immediate reports of unrest. Police arrested about two dozen people Friday and Saturday in the run-up to the OAS meeting.
Some OAS delegates complained that the organization was being wrongly targeted, noting there were no clear trade issues on the assembly's agenda. The OAS represents more than 30 member Western Hemisphere nations.
Addressing the hundreds waving signs and chanting, protest speakers said the OAS - as part of an international power structure including the WTO and International Monetary Fund - had helped erode workers' rights and exacerbate poverty through free-trade agreements and other deals.
Activist author Noam Chomsky rejected what he called the ``childish nonsense'' of free-trade advocates who say globalization is an unstoppable tidal wave engulfing the plant.
``Free trade agreements are nothing of the sort, and they're certainly not agreements,'' he said to cheers.
``I'm protesting an organization that essentially wants to make decisions about my life and about other workers' lives without me having any say about it,'' said Craig Regester, 29, a Detroit protester. ``This isn't Seattle, but this is definitely an emerging movement.''
The 52-year-old OAS had planned during the Windsor meeting to focus on human security issues in the Americas while taking care of normal business, such as approving a next year's budget and electing some officers and committees.
Canadian Premier Jean Chretien was to open the assembly Sunday night, though some ministers held informal discussions Sunday afternoon.
OAS delegates were also scheduled to consider last month's presidential run-off in Peru, after a human rights report accused the South American country of failing to meet democratic election standards. If the foreign ministers agree, they could subject Peru to OAS sanctions.
``The electoral process in Peru clearly constitutes an irregular interruption of the democratic process,'' according to the report, prepared by an international human rights commission. The report also called for new elections that conformed to international standards.
An OAS monitoring team left Peru before the vote to protest the government's refusal to allow it to study new computer software for counting ballots. President Alberto Fujimori was the only candidate on the ballot, after challenger Alejandro Toledo boycotted what he said was an unfair election process.
Several former world leaders, including former President Jimmy Carter, sharply criticized Peru in an open letter to the foreign ministers.
``This was not a democratic election,'' stated the letter, which was also signed by former Barbados Premier Erskine Sandiford and former Costa Rican President Rodrigo Carazo, who led a National Democratic Institute-Carter Center mission assessing the Peru election.
The U.S. delegation, led by special envoy to Latin America Kenneth ``Buddy'' MacKay, have supported a harsh response to Peru's elections, while Mexico and Brazil have expressed fear over setting a precedent of OAS intervention over electoral issues. Mexico is holding a presidential election next month.
The organization must avoid becoming ``a substitute for functions that correspond to state institutions,'' said Mexico's OAS ambassador, Claude Heller.
The OAS meets through Tuesday in Windsor, a middle-class city of about 262,000 across the Detroit River from the Motor City.