HAVANA -- Labor leaders and leftist politicians from throughout Latin America met in Havana Sunday for a conference called by President Fidel Castro to address the region's staggering $360 billion foreign debt.
The 58-year-old Cuban leader organized the meeting to push his position that Latin American nations should not be forced to pay the debt, which Castro in a speech Friday called 'a matter of life and death' for Latin Americans.
Cuba invited more than 800 Latin American government officials, labor leaders, politicians and economists to attend the four-day meeting, which begins Tuesday.
Among the delegates who arrived over the weekend were former Bolivian President Walter Guevara Arce; former Uruguayan presidential candidate Liber Seregni, a retired army general, and about 100 other participants from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.
Latin America's major debtors -- Argentina, Brazil and Mexico -- were not expected to send high-level delegations to the hastily organized conference because those governments have adopted a moderate position on the debt issues.
The four and eight others -- Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia and the Dominican Republic -- belong to the Cartagena bloc of debtor nations, which has held three meetings in the past year aimed at pressuring creditors to lower their interest rates, lengthen repayment periods and eliminate protectionist trade policies that block Latin American exports.
Most of the Cartagena nations favor a continuing dialogue with creditors, but some of the governments are interested in Castro's latest bid to politicize the issue -- if only because it inevitably will put more pressure on creditors.
Many of Latin America's creditors are located in the United States and numerous other developed nations.
The United States has dismissed the conference as a move by Castro to win regional prestige by speaking strongly on the sensitive debt question.
But Castro, in his speech Friday marking the 32nd anniversary of the first battle of the rebel revolution that brought him to power in 1959, rejected the charge.
Latin American nations are suffering from the worst economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s, he contended.
'To those who question if we are the right country to hold this conference, I say the problem can be discussed in any country of Latin America. But it must be discussed,' Castro said.
