Panama City, Panama - An overall view of the first working session of Foreign Ministers of the Fourth Summit of the Association of Caribbean States in Panama City, yetsreday. (Photo: AP)

PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP) - The Caribbean, better known for pristine beaches than for its poverty and unemployment, is trying to pull together economically and politically as it began a two-day summit yesterday amid regional rivalries that tug the mainly island nations in a north-south divide.

The two giants of the region, Mexico and Venezuela, are pulling the 25 members of the Association of Caribbean States, or ACS, in different directions.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez backed out of the summit at the last minute Wednesday without explanation. But his foreign secretary, Ali Rodriguez, was in Panama City to push Chavez's PetroCaribe plan, which will supply Caribbean countries with oil on preferential terms - and also strengthen an anti-US coalition led by Venezuela and Cuba.

"The Venezuelan effort to establish PetroCaribe to supply oil on easy payment terms to Caribbean countries is very important," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said at the conference.

Thirteen of the 15 members of the narrower Caribbean Community group, or Caricom - mainly island nations - have already signed onto Venezuela's oil initiative.
Cuban President Fidel Castro, who faced what he called an assassination attempt the last time he attended a summit in Panama, in 2000, did not attend this week's meeting.

Still, Cuba managed to get a clause condemning the US economic boycott inserted in a draft resolution of the summit declaration, which also stated support for greater representation of developing countries on the UN Security Council.

The United States also drew praise, after the US Congress approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
However, the meeting was marked by fears that the United States already dominates trade with the Caribbean.
Almost all commerce goes north-south, mainly to the United States, and only about 8 per cent of trade is between Caribbean nations, a fact that ACS Secretary-General Ruben Silie called a "lamentable state of affairs".

Poverty, trade, tourism, disaster relief and transportation agreements were also on the summit agenda.
Storms this year have hit the Caribbean earlier and harder than at almost anytime since record-keeping began.

Mexican President Vicente Fox, meanwhile, is expected to push for investment protection agreements to help open the region for Mexico's large construction, telecommunications and manufacturing consortiums.

But Cuba is also expected to use the summit to press its case for Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles to be extradited from the United States to Venezuela, where he faces charges in a 1976 airplane bombing that killed 73 people. Cuba plans to present a resolution calling on all countries "to cooperate in the fight against terrorism".

"If the United States wants to be consistent in the fight against terrorism, it should extradite Posada," said Cuba's assistant foreign minister, Rafael Dausa.

The two-day summit is the fourth in the 10-year history of the 25-member ACS.

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