Joseph R. Bigive (*)
This April, the President Obama will travel to Trinidad and Tobago to meet companions of the whole Western Hemisphere in the Summit of the Americas. Before to this historical meeting, I traveled to Central America and South America to realize you consult with Latin-American leaders congregated in Chile and Costa Rica with regard to the summit and the challenges that face the villages of the Americas. These meetings are the first and important step about a new day in the relations and the development of a society between the countries and peoples of the hemisphere.
The President and I understand that, only on having worked both, our countries can overcome the challenges that we face. Nowadays, already not only we are independent nations that are in the same side of the planet. In the current interconnected world, we all are nearby, that we face many common worries.
The current world economic crisis affects practically all of us: to every country, community and family. The citizens of all the countries look for answers, look for hope, and for it, appeal his leaders. It is our duty, like world associates, to listen to his called one and to forge together the solution to a common problem.
Our administration is taking several measures to do that this happens: the Congress has approved the Law for the Recovery and Reinvestment in the United States, which takes as an intention to promote the generation of employment and to fix the course for the growth during the next generation. With his budget, the President proposes to sit the bases of the economy of the future, with considerable investment in care of health, education and energy. And we are employed with our associates at the G-20, who will meet next week in London, in a plan coordinated to assure the recovery and renewal of the growth, and to reform the normative system and of international supervision in order to assure that a crisis of this type does not happen again.
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For the American continent, to reactivate the economy of the United States and to make sure that the international financial institutions should attend to the interests of the people is of particular importance. Our economic interconnection implies that the economic soundness of the United States is of benefit for the hemisphere and can turn into the engine that impels the economic growth bottom-up and the equality in the whole region.
The economy is not the only challenge that needs of our cooperation. Also we face a double safety challenge, so much for our countries as his settlers. Our nations are overwhelmed by the violence of bands and the illegal traffic of weapon and drugs.
In the United States, we need to do more to reduce the demand of illicit drugs and to stop the traffic of weapon and big quantities of cash across our south border. We applaud the brave position of Mexico against the drugs cartels, like also the efforts of Colombia to fight the drugs, but we know that they will have the side effect of pushing the traffickers towards Central America. We will base on the Initiative of Merida, initiated last year with the President Bush, to help Mexico and the Central American countries in a joint effort to face this threat straight. The drug trafficking is a problem that we all share, and we must find a definitive solution together.
On having faced these threats and having faced him the most serious economic crisis in several generations, the countries of the hemisphere must fix the sight towards the future. And we must work together, how allied, to transmit to our citizens the hope of which the future will offer us better days.
(*) Vice-president of the United States
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