Bolivia joining trade pact

HAVANA -- Bolivian President Evo Morales joined Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez for an endorsement yesterday of a socialist trade initiative aimed at providing an alternative to US-backed free trade efforts in Latin America.

Morales planned yesterday to officially include his Andean nation in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a pact that leftists Castro and Chávez signed a year ago.

So far, only Venezuela and Cuba are signatories to the pact, known by its Spanish acronym as ALBA, which translates as ''dawn." It also has been referred to as the ''people's trade agreement."

The pact calls for trade and cooperation agreements among Latin American nations in lieu of Washington's unsuccessful Free Trade Area of the Americas, which Chávez and Castro said was a US attempt to ''annex" the region.

The ceremony yesterday was expected to mark a political and economic alliance among communist Cuba and left-leaning Venezuela and Bolivia, as the three countries work toward their own idea for regional integration, without US influence.

The pact will allow Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela to trade some products with zero tariffs and strengthen close ties among the three nations, whose leaders are known for their strong opposition to US policy.

''We don't want to be rich, but we do want to live well, with dignity, as brothers, so there is no misery, so there is no poverty, so people are not excluded -- that is among our fundamental objectives," Chávez said of the trade pact in Caracas on Friday.

Chávez and Morales have warned that their countries could withdraw from the Andean Community if fellow trade-bloc members Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador go through with free-trade pacts with the United States.

Chávez said in his Caracas speech Friday that Venezuela and Cuba would happily buy all the soybeans that Bolivia produces.

Colombia, which had been a key soybean market for Bolivia, signed a free trade pact recently with the United States, and can get soybeans at much lower prices, the Venezuelan president said.

Since a US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas accord fell apart last year, Washington has signed nine free trade agreements with Latin American countries. Ecuador is currently in negotiations.

''As long as the free-trade pact [with the United States] threatens the small and medium-sized soy producers in Bolivia, ALBA will save them," Chávez said.

''We'll take them by the hand and say, 'Come with us, we'll buy your soy beans, look at the difference,' " the Venezuelan added.