US embassy cable - 05SANSALVADOR2627

UNCLAS SAN SALVADOR 002627 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR INR/R/MR, EB/TPP, WHA/CEN, WHA/EPSC, WHA/PDA 
AMEMBASSIES FOR PAS, POL, USAID 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KMDR, ES, KPAO, UNGA 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION - UNGA, SEPTEMBER 11, AND KATRINA 
 
 
UNGA 
1.  "Disappointment at the Summit, Passivity on the Plains" 
by Joaquin Samayoa in Sept.  21 moderate daily La Prensa 
Grfica (circ. 110,000). 
 
 "The UN General Assembly on global poverty produced a 
lukewarm consensus, expressed in a document that emerged 
after several months of work to accommodate the concessions 
that powerful countries demanded to the original rough 
draft.  Other countries could only sign it and express their 
dissatisfaction. 
"In a way, the agreements have been a step backward from the 
commitments of five years ago to help less developed 
countries reach the Millenium goals.  The ambassador of one 
of the most influential countries even went so far as to 
request the removal from the document of all explicit 
references to those goals. 
"The disappointment that several Latin American leaders 
expressed during the Summit or in later statements is, 
therefore, understandable.  However, we have neither lost 
much nor failed to gain much with a document that barely 
maintains previous commitments. After all, development 
assistance can neither be imposed nor demanded... 
"In all societies and in international relations, poor 
countries and poor people need things from those more 
fortunate.  They need justice, respect, and a little 
solidarity.  This is easy to understand.  What is less 
obvious, though equally true, is the inverse:  the wealthy 
need the services, the productivity, and the consumption of 
the poor.  They also need the political stability and social 
peace that extreme poverty tends to undermine. 
"The UN must show more firmness and initiative in matters 
crucial to the development of poor countries.. Nations that 
through no merit of their own are privileged to be 
comfortably seated on petroleum resources that all others 
need must be brought under international regulations that 
satisfy a logic other than that of the free market.  Those 
are the kind of challenges that today's community of nations 
must face. 
"But we poor countries have our own responsibilities.  [We 
must remember] that the  development assistance that we 
receive from other countries comes from the taxes of their 
citizens.  It has always seemed difficult to me to keep a 
straight face and request that the citizens of other 
countries use their tax dollars to help us while we resist 
paying the taxes we owe.  Tax collection, corruption and 
inefficiency in the public sector are problems that we are 
called upon to deal with." 
SEPTEMBER 11 AND HURRICANE KATRINA 
 
2. "That Black September" by  Dr. Luis Sarbelio Navarrete in 
Sept. 21  El Diario de Hoy (conservative, circ. 100,000). 
 
" Four years have gone by and the winds of hatred still blow 
around our world. 
 
"Reading remembrances from September 11, 2001, I re-lived my 
own experience of that day..  I did not understand well what 
was happening until, alarmed, I heard President 
Bush,.defining the action as vile and cowardly, say with 
firmness:  "This is the first war of the Twenty-First 
Century.' 
 
"We all notice when, during the Salvadoran independence 
festivities of that black September, a small group of 
Salvadorans exhibited hatred against the United States, 
yelling that they would "send another plane," in clear 
reference to that repugnant action where more than 2,700 
innocent people, including five Salvadorans, died... 
"Now, decrying the lack of immediate aid for the victims of 
Katrina, [Bush's] internal enemies are in the forefront of 
discrediting the President who - whether we like him or not 
- is a brave and visionary man..." 
BUTLER