VENEZUELA, February 2, 2009. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias welcomed his Latin American peers who started the 4th Extraordinary Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) Monday. The meeting is celebrated in the context of the 10th anniversary of the arrival of Hugo Chavez to power. The event has the participation of Presidents Evo Morales (Bolivia), Manuel Zelaya (Honduras) and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit (Dominica) and First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura (Cuba). During this first widened meeting in 2009, they will examine the plan for steps and work for this year and evaluate the progress reached in 2008, especially in food, public health and education. It is estimated they will discuss on new mechanisms to promote financial and economic protection of the member countries before the world economic crisis. The attendants to the ALBA Summit gave homage to Liberator Simon Bolivar, in the 10th anniversary of the arrival of Hugo Chavez to power on February 2, 1999, and went to Paseo Los Proceres in Caracas for a massive activity. (Cubaminrex- PL) |