Obama Bound to Hear Some Truths, Says Chavez VENEZUELA, April 16, 2009. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced that he is willing to attend a meeting requested by US President Barack Obama with the leaders of UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations. We will tell our truths, he said after voicing his hopes that President Obama will listen to the people of the region. "We are going to the meeting, we are ready to attend. Let us hope the US president comes to listen," said Chavez. The Venezuelan leader was approached by reporters during the arrival of Cuban President Raul Castro, in Venezuela to attend the Extraordinary Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). Chávez said that almost eight years after its establishment, ALBA is alive and growing and the Washington-promoted Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is dead. He went on to question the very objective of the upcoming Summit of the Americas, created to impose the FTAA in the region. The Venezuelan president recalled that during the first Summit of the Americas in Miami in December 1994, US President Bill Clinton said that Bolivar’s dream was beginning to come true, which Chavez considered a heresy. The FTAA is the Monroe Doctrine—America for Americans—, said Chavez, while ALBA is Bolivarianism, We are the union of the south, he said, and the Summit of the Americas continues to be the Monroe strategy. "We will have to set up our own space in lieu of the Organization of American States. Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, has been suggesting an Organization of Latin American States," concluded Chavez. (Cubaminrex- Granma-PL).
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