Posted By Alexander Main Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - 8:25 PM
Whether in the media or in U.S. policy circles, the words "Middle
East" and "South America" are
rarely mentioned together in a positive light. Reports of Middle Eastern
terrorist cells allegedly operating in South America's Tri-Border
region or on Venezuela's
Margarita Island
have appeared intermittently in the U.S. press since at least 2003.
These reports allege that sleeper cells belonging to Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and a
number of other groups are potentially plotting violent attacks throughout the Americas. Never
mind that no evidence has yet emerged of terrorist acts or plots hatched by the
alleged cells; the rumors of their presence continue to pop up regularly in the
U.S.
press and in government reports.
Posted By Tom Garofalo Thursday, March 25, 2010 - 5:06 PM
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip to Latin America
was for the most part a very ordinary visit with allies and a chance to firm up
relationships with newly elected presidents in Costa
Rica, Uruguay
and Chile. But when she arrived in Brazil, the agenda expanded to encompass
bilateral, regional and global issues - from regional security - Brazilian leadership in the U.N. Stabilizing
Mission in Haiti - to energy
and trade, as well as Iran's
nuclear ambitions and the U.S.
hopes to thwart them. The kinds of
discussions that are reserved for global powers.
For those who follow Latin America, the visit (postponed in
part to Senate delays in confirming the administration's Western
Hemisphere team) was overdue.
For a growing number of common allies in the hemisphere, the South
American giant has supplanted the United States as the indispensable
country. But more than Clinton's visit
to Brazil, it is Lula's foray into the geo-political cauldron of the Middle
East that indicates, as the Inter-American Dialogue's Michael Shifter noted
this week, that "the country of the future" has arrived.
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