Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy meet in Paris for summit on fiscal union

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/REUTERS

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the German chancellor and French president, will meet in Paris on Monday to thrash out a deal on fiscal union that they hope will bring long-term stability to the currency zone. The blueprint will be presented to other European leaders at a Brussels summit at the end of the week.

Financial markets are also expecting an interest rate cut from the European Central Bank on Thursday to give floundering euro economies a much-needed shot in the arm.

After months of deepening gloom that saw the eurozone lurch closer to recession and potential disintegration, a hint of optimism is in the air. There is a feeling in European capitals that moves to transform the currency union into a fiscal union, with greater centralised control over the tax-and-spend policies of the 17 member countries, could be the beginning of a solution for the debt crisis and calm the markets.

Merkel spelled out her proposals for fiscal union in a speech to the German parliament last week, and ECB president Mario Draghi has talked of the need for a "fiscal compact".

"They are clearly getting closer; they're singing perhaps not from the same hymn sheet, but their differences are not irreconcilable," said Grant Lewis, head of economic research at Daiwa Capital Markets. "Hopefully by Friday we'll have an agreement in principle." He noted, however, that the problems would start when politicians got down to the details at committee level. "The coming week may not be too bad for markets, but that doesn't mean the crisis is over. Ultimately what people want is eurobonds – effectively a German guarantee on Italian debt."

Merkel, backed by the Netherlands, wants a regime under which eurozone countries would surrender fiscal powers to an independent European authority that would be able to veto budgets. This could be a lengthy process, however, as it would require changes to EU treaties.

France is uncomfortable with the idea of automatic sanctions for fiscal rule breakers, and would prefer a less formal arrangement where heads of state would impose sanctions. Sarkozy also favours immediate measures such as eurobonds or a greater role for the ECB, which have met with stern public opposition from Merkel. But on Friday she acknowledged that a gradual evolution towards eurobonds was already under way, and appeared to be softening her stance on the ECB's role.

Analysts at Citigroup expect the EU council meeting on Friday will provide at least a roadmap on how to put in place stricter fiscal rules for eurozone countries. And the ECB might be willing, as suggested by Draghi, to take further action to support struggling countries by channelling rescue money through the International Monetary Fund.

Not all are convinced. "While it's possible that bold decisions could still be announced, we feel that the differences in the negotiating positions remain too large at this juncture for the latest 'grand plan' to tick all the boxes," said Jürgen Michels at Citi.

Others in the City are even more pessimistic. Raoul Raparel, of thinktank Open Europe, said: "Expectations ahead of this summit are much higher than they have been for a while and there is a chance some progress will be made. However, even if a political agreement is reached on closer budgetary integration, it will not provide a solution to the crisis, especially in the short term."

David Cameron, who met Sarkozy for lunch in Paris last week, indicated he would support Merkel's plan, although he stressed that he would defend Britain's interests if changes to the EU treaty were made.

 

Amid a more optimistic mood, interest rates on Italian and Spanish government bonds fell sharply and stock markets rallied last week., with the FTSE 100 index in London climbing 7.5%.

"It was the first happy week for markets in a long while," said Tobias Blattner at Daiwa Capital Markets. Disappointed by the Eurogroup meeting on Tuesday, 29 November, which saw euro area finance ministers admit to having failed to boost the EFSF bailout fund to the promised €1trn, markets rallied the following day when the world's major central banks stepped in to lower the cost of US dollar funding for banks in Europe and elsewhere.

"The rally carried right through to Friday, further supported by expectations of a cut in the ECB's key policy rate this Thursday and the EU summit on Friday, which will hopefully deliver plans to transform the currency union into a closer fiscal union," said Blattner.

Iranian opposition student groups condemn storming of British embassy

 

Iranian protesters storm the British embassy in Tehran on Tuesday. Photograph: Ay-Collection/Sipa/Rex Feature

Two opposition student organisations in Iran have condemned the storming of the British embassy, claiming those behind it were associated with the Islamic regime.

Tahkim Vahdat and Advar Tahkim, groups with some influence among Iranian students, have issued separate statements criticising the attack that triggered one of the worst crises in bilateral ties between Tehran and London since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"The office of Tahkim Vahdat condemns the attack at the British embassy – the attackers were not true representative of Iranian students, they were affiliated with the authorities in power," the statement said, according to Kalame.com, a website close to the opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

"The [local] media portrayed the attackers as a group of students but people associated with pressure groups and some forces from the revolutionary guards were seen among them who have no affiliation to students," it added.

Tahkim Vahdat was originally created in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution as a conservative Islamist student organisation aimed at combating secular movements. At the time, many of its members were involved in the seizure of the US embassy and the hostage crisis.

But after the election in 1997 of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, it experienced a major shake-up and supported pro-democracy movements, especially in the events after the disputed presidential elections in 2009, when many of its members were arrested.

"Iran's national interests were damaged 32 years ago after the seizure of the US embassy with similar claims, an incident that doubled the challenges Iran was facing at the time," the organisation said. "Despite the claims, the leader of student movements [in Iran] and dozens of other students are currently kept in jail for criticism."

Advar Tahkim, a similar organisation but consisting of graduates and academics rather than students, said the attackers were from the basij militia, a paramilitary force under control of the revolutionary guards that has played a significant role in crushing protests organised by various movements, including student, women and political activists.

Western diplomats based in Tehran visited the British embassy and its separate diplomatic residential compound in Qolhak in the north of the capital on Thursday, where two days earlier protesters had damaged properties, ransacked offices and scattered documents.

The Polish ambassador in Tehran, whose country holds the presidency of the council of the European Union, is said to have held emergency meetings with his other counterparts. The semi-official Fars news agency said diplomats from Italy, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Spain and Turkey were among those who visited the two places on Thursday in solidarity with their British diplomats.

After inspecting the two compounds, diplomats told Reuters that what they witnessed appeared to have been the result of a "well organised" attack rather than a "spontaneous eruption of anger".

"It was devastating to see," one EU diplomat told the agency. "I saw two rooms where you couldn't see what they were. There was just ashes." He added: "You could tell the action was co-ordinated."

State agencies in Iran described the protest as a spontaneous reaction of "students" to Britain's anti-Iran policies, especially the UK's recent severing of all ties with Iranian financial sectors, including the Central Bank of Iran, which is crucial to the survival of the country's oil industry.

In his reaction to the attack, the foreign secretary, William Hague, who on Wednesday ordered the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from the UK, told the parliament that the attackers were "student Basij militia".

In the wake of the recent events, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has so far remained silent, although his foreign ministry regretted the attack and promised an investigation.

Analysts believe Tuesday's storming of the embassy was not sanctioned by Ahmadinejad and his supporters, who have appeared as moderate in light of the incident, but rather by their opponents, who are believed to be attempting to undermine the president and his mandate in their top-level power struggle.

Some previously moderate figures in Iranian politics, such as the parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, or the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, have taken extreme stances recently in the hope of pleasing the radicals, especially the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for what is believed to be a greater share of power.

Chinese panda census offers hope as Sunshine and Sweetie fly in

 

Tian Tian (Sweetie), one of two giant pandas set to arrive at Edinburgh zoo from China. Photograph: China Daily/Reuters

A panda census is under way in China that is expected to confirm a slight recovery in numbers of one of the world's most endangered species.

The two-year survey in the mountains of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu is the most comprehensive and sophisticated study ever made of the wild population – currently estimated at 1,600 pandas – and their habitat.

The census comes as Edinburgh zoo prepares to take delivery of the first two giant pandas to arrive in the UK for almost twenty years. Tian Tian (Sweetie) and Yang Guang (Sunshine) will fly out from Chengdu on Sunday on a jet emblazoned with a panda portrait.

Visitors to their new European home will soon be able to observe the pair in captivity, while rangers in their homeland are trudging through forests, collecting DNA samples and logging droppings and paw prints.

Conservationists and government officials believe the survey will show modest success from the creation of about 50 panda reserves and a multibillion dollar campaign to raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity.

Thousands of scientists and volunteers will take part in the study.

The results will not be available until at least 2013, but one of the senior technical advisers, Wei Fuwen of the Institute of Zoology, was optimistic.

"The number of pandas has definitely increased due to the laws and regulations that have been passed to protect the species and the forests. But it is too early to say how much of a rise there has been."

Estimates of panda numbers in the wild vary enormously due to the difficulty of collecting data about the notoriously shy animal, which lives in dense, high-altitude vegetation: the last survey required more than 35,000 volunteers. But there have been encouraging signs that the population has stabilised after decades of decline. From a low of 1,100 giant pandas in the 1980s, the most recent survey by the state forestry administration in 2004 suggested the wild population had increased to 1,596.

Another academic study in 2007, which used genetic sampling, put the number as high as 3,000 The new census – which started in Yingjing county in Sichuan in late October – uses both old-style tracking methods and modern DNA analysis.

"After this, I think we can get a better idea of how to help them survive," said Fan Zhiyong of the WWF conservation group. "We think the study will show that the population is basically stable with a small increase over the past 10 years."

The survey will focus on an area of 3,200 sq km (1235 sq miles), though the animals are thought to range over territories almost 1,000 times as large.

Even if a small gain is confirmed, the panda is not out of danger.Habitat loss is the biggest threat. Expanding cities and villages have pushed ever further into the mountains. Road and trains have carved up much of the remaining area. There are almost no rivers left undammed.

"The biggest challenge is from infrastructure because the economy has grown so fast. We really need to get the government agencies to pay more attention to that," said Fan. "The endangered status of the giant panda has not changed."

Chinese authorities, working with international conservation groups, have established a series of "breeding" channels to link reserves so that small populations of pandas do not become isolated. One purpose of the DNA testing is to assess the extent to which the animals have become genetically inbred.

Scientists have claimed success in breeding the animal in captivity. Edinburgh zoo's new inmates are from a captive population that has risen rapidly to 312 animals worldwide thanks to artificial insemination and other husbandry techniques.

Critics say the breeding programme is commercially and politically motivated to produce animals that are given in diplomatic exchanges or rented to zoos, reportedly for up to $1m (£630,000) a year.

But intense efforts are now under way to prepare captive pandas to be released into the wild. More than 100 cameras have recently been set up in a semi-wild environment in Wulong where a dozen or so animals will be trained to fend for themselves before being exposed to a less-protected habitat.

An earlier attempt to put a panda, Xiang Xiang, into the wild ended with its death after a fight with tougher rivals.

Many conservationists believe the huge resources dedicated to captive panda breeding would be better used to protect habitat and crack down on the illegal trade in rare animal products.

The contrast will be evident on Saturday. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, auctioneers in Beijing will sell off at least 400 bottles of wine made from tiger bone in disregard of a global trade ban. Meanwhile, in the skies above China, Tian Tian and Yang Guang will be flying to Europe on a specially chartered plane .

Zimbabwe diamond auction to go ahead despite human rights fears

 

Miners dig for diamonds in Marange. Photograph: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

Diamonds worth hundreds of millions of dollars are due to be put on sale on Friday by a joint Chinese-Zimbabwean company with strong military ties.

The auction follows last month's decision by the industry watchdog, the Kimberley Process (KP), to lift a ban on sales from Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields despite objections from human rights groups.

A letter seen by the Guardian, from Jiang Zhaoyao, general manager of Anjin Investment, invites the chairman of the KP working group to attend Anjin's first tender, from 2 to 5 December, at its sorting centre at Harare airport.

It does not mention the quantity or value of the diamonds. But a report in the state-owned Herald newspaper last month put Anjin's stockpile at more than 2m carats. On Thursday, a separate source claimed a KP monitor had estimated the haul at 3.6m carats.

Generally Marange stones are considered to fetch an average of $80 per carat, which could push their net value up to nearly $300m. This may rise further now that the stones are KP-approved and legal.

Anjin is a 50-50 joint venture between the Zimbabwean and Chinese governments. Press reports have alleged that senior managers at Anjin are also high ranking officers of the Zimbabwe national army. The campaign group Global Witness obtained company records showing Zimbabwe's brigadier-general Charles Tarumbwa, named on several sanctions lists, as a major shareholder.

And in March this year, the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, criticised corruption and a lack of transparency in the diamond mining sector. "These include Anjin, which has been mining for more than 18 months in partnership with the police and the army and has not remitted any cent to Treasury," he said.

The KP ban was imposed in 2009 following allegations that Zimbabwean military officers had a stake in the industry and were diverting funds to president Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

Last month, the Herald hailed the lifting of the ban as a "decisive victory in the struggle against Western economic hegemony" and reported that Zimbabwe stands to earn more than $3 billion (£1.8bn) a year from the three Marange mines.

But Mike Davis of Global Witness, who visited the site of Anjin's operations last year, said on Thursday: "Based on evidence we have seen, it is clear that Zanu-PF hardliners are intending to use Marange's diamonds to finance their efforts to cling on to power.

"Whereas three years ago the game plan, in terms of seizing Marange's riches, was sending in the military to shoot a couple of hundred people, the approach is now more sophisticated. It centres on joint ventures like Anjin which consist of unscrupulous foreign firms and Zanu-PF stalwarts."

He added: "The Kimberley Process's response has been to bury its head in the sand and throw away any residual credibility it had as a guarantor that diamonds do not finance abuses. The fact that Anjin's operation may be superficially impressive is missing the point about the imminent risk of diamond-fuelled violence in Zimbabwe."

The Zimbabwe government wholly owns another mining company, Marange Resources, and has a 50% stake in Mbada, which it co-owns with South African investors.

Tiseke Kasambala, senior Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, said: "We can't comment specifically on Anjin because we haven't conducted any research on their operations. However, we don't support the KP's decision to allow the exports of diamonds by Anjin, Mbada and Marange Resources because the government has failed to comply with the KP's recommendations under the joint work plan, including an end to smuggling, licensing artisanal miners and demillitarisation."

Taming the wild west of family planning | World news

 

In Senegal, 43% of the population is under the age of 15. Photograph: Moussa Sow/AFP/Getty Images

At the back of a clinic in the densely populated Guediawaye, where a tide of rural incomers washes up on the edge of urban Dakar, a woman sits waiting with the undemanding endurance of poverty and old age.

Nene Ba looks in her 60s. The small child on her lap could be her grandson. But she is 44 and the one-year-old boy is the last of her 10 children.

"I am so tired," she says, adding that she had not wanted all these babies. "I didn't know how to stop." Now she does: at the family planning clinic where she is waiting, her tubes were tied, freeing her of the curse of endless childbearing. Her husband, who sells fish while she takes in washing, was indifferent, she says.

Just 20 minutes away, at a conference centre in downtown Dakar, the world's largest-ever gathering of experts, advocates and campaigners in birth control is under way. Senegal was chosen because this is what one conference participant called "the wild, wild west of family planning".

Sub-Saharan Africa teems with small, skinny, ragged children – 43% of the population is under 15 – but in the francophone west just 10% of women have access to the hormonal birth control methods which since the 1960s have enabled women elsewhere to take control of their fertility and live the life they chose. Some 40% of pregnancies in the developing world are unintended and nearly half of those end in abortion, most of which are unsafe. Complications kill an estimated 47,000 women a year – 13% of all deaths in pregnancy and childbirth.

In the year when the planet welcomed its seven billionth baby, some may see this as a scandal. When the prime development goal of the moment is cutting maternal mortality, it seems inexplicable.

At the Dakar conference there is evidence that things have begun to shift. The Gates Foundation is putting in $70m a year – Melinda Gates has said it is now one of her top priorities and speaks forcefully about the need for women to have control over their lives. Britain, the Netherlands and France are all putting in new money.

But the need for birth control still outstrips the resources. A poster presentation at the conference reports that only 48.2% of women who had an abortion in Accra, Ghana, went home with contraception. Below that stark fact is a quote from the Cairo population conference of 1994. "If the woman we treat for post-abortion complications is there because she could not get contraception, we have failed her. If she leaves without family planning, we have failed her twice."

In Pikine, another district on the outskirts of Dakar, children throng the dusty streets. Sewage and sanitation are bad and some of the concrete houses regularly flood.

Fatou Sann, 46, is the only person working in a house of 26 people. She sells fish which she gets from the central Dakar market. A four-day-old baby is brought out and another of maybe six months sits on someone's lap.

Sann has six children herself, which she says with a robust laugh is "definitely enough", but these are the babies of sisters-in-law.

Her father, Anfang San, 74, has progressive views. "I think that limitation is a good option. Four is quite enough – or three. Some have eight or nine. You don't know how to feed them."

The local mayor, Aliou Diouck, talks of families where eight children sleep on the floor – "they do not know the taste of a bed", he says.

"Here we are in a very poor environment. Men and women do not work. What's going to happen? They will just have sex. When you have nothing to do, it's the main occupation."

His own father had several wives – Senegal is 95% Muslim – and 21 children. Diouck has four of his own and says he and his wife have decided to have no more. He hopes to set an example.

But at the health centre in Pikine they say that only 5% to 6% of local women come for family planning. And last year they had hormonal contraceptives for 80% of the time.

One of the reasons, says Monica Kerrigan, head of family planning at the Gates Foundation, was that orders for supplies went in on the basis of past consumption – which dropped off when stocks ran out.

"We have to learn a lot from the HIV world. They made ARVs [antiretroviral drugs to keep HIV in check] a top priority."

HIV comes up a lot when you ask why family planning seems to have made so little progress. George Bush in his State of the Union address in 2003 announced a colossal $15bn to fight Aids over five years. Most of the money was for drug treatment, which, says Professor Duff Gillespie of the Bloomberg school of public health at Johns Hopkins University, "allowed evangelicals and George Bush to suddenly start making large announcements because they were no longer dealing with sexual behaviour.

"Why was so much money put into HIV treatment but not prevention – ABC – abstinence, be faithful, wear a condom? There was a little on prevention – around 17%. But most of that (10%) went to prevention in terms of things other than ABC. What happened [with treatment] is that it took sex out of Aids."

But Gillespie says that the stagnation of family planning was not solely due to HIV campaigns – the real stagnation came after the Cairo population conference in 1994.

That meeting put family planning into a framework of reproductive health rights which focused on sexually transmitted diseases, the empowerment of girls and maternal health issues. Women's groups were delighted by the move, but actual birth control slipped down the agenda.

"Cairo changed the vocabulary and the way people think about reproductive health and that was good," says Gillespie.

Unease about sex, religious beliefs in the US and elsewhere, women's low status and cultural issues in poor countries have all made family planning a difficult issue to push forward.

Dan Pellegrom, who has been president of the family planning charity Pathfinder International for 26 years, says the movement can be too passive. "I do think we need to push the envelope.

"In recent years we as a movement have said let's hang on to what we have achieved. That is an argument for retaining the status quo," he says. "You don't mobilise people by retaining the status quo."

He would like to see the fight about abortion taken on – the most contentious area of them all, but more family planning means fewer terminations and fewer women's deaths from backstreet abortions. And it would expose some agendas. "It is so important for Americans to understand that most of the people who claim to be opposed to abortion are equally opposed to family planning – they just don't talk about it," he says.

Dilma Rousseff's pledge to empower Brazil's women comes good

 

Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's first female president, came to power a year ago promising to fight for women's rights. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

She came to power vowing to blaze a trail for women's rights and now, nearly a year after being elected Brazil's first female president, Dilma Rousseff may be achieving just that.

A wave of women are preparing to stand for office in her home state of Minas Gerais, where Reginaldo Lopes, the local leader of Rousseff's Workers' party (PT), said the party would field a record number of female candidates in 2012.

"The PT is going to explode, it will be all about the women," Lopes said, outlining the party's plans to field female candidates in several of Minas Gerais' largest cities, among them Governador Valadares and Juiz de Fora.

At least 100 female candidates are planning to stand in mayoral elections next year, according to the state's leading newspaper, Estado de Minas.

The newspaper, based in the state capital of Belo Horizonte, where Rousseff was born and raised, claimed the candidates hoped to take advantage of what electioneers and journalists have dubbed "the Dilma effect".

"Lipstick, well-groomed hair, precisely chosen clothes – matching with the shoes, of course – may all became indispensable items in next year's elections," the paper said in a somewhat patronising front-page story this week. "Is it women's turn?" it wondered.

A career civil servant and former leftwing guerrilla, Rousseff came to office in January, exactly 60 years after the election of Brazil's first female MP.

She became the eighth elected female president in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in her first address to the nation promised to battle for women's rights so that electing female leaders became "a natural event".

"I would like fathers and mothers to look into their daughters' eyes today and tell them: 'Yes, women can,'" Rousseff said in her inaugural address.

Despite the initial jubilation at her historic election there were concerns, even within her own party, that Rousseff would struggle to replicate the successes of her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula, widely considered the most popular president in Brazilian history and famously dubbed "my man" by his US counterpart Barack Obama because of his standing with his country's electorate, left office with approval ratings of more than 80%.

Almost a year after taking the reins Rousseff is, however, faring well. The latest polls, conducted in September, gave her a personal approval rating of 71%.

Analysts say voters have responded particuarly well to the president's well-publicised attempts to tackle corruption – labelled faxina or house-cleaning. So far five ministers have been ejected from their jobs after allegations of graft. Other high-profile heads are expected to roll in the coming months.

"At first people had their doubts, but today Dilma has won the people over," said Lopes, who believes that Rousseff's current popularity is likely to help boost support for other female candidates.

The PT is not the only Brazilian party looking to cash in on the "Dilma effect" in Minas Gerais. Its main rival, the Brazilian Social Democratic party or PSDB, also sees an opening for a greater number of female candidates. The PSDB is reportedly considering 39 women for its electoral lists.

"We believe that there is now a greater stimulus for women to take part in the elections with the expectation of winning," Lenita Norman, the PSDB's regional head told Estado de Minas. "We have a female president in a world where this is a rarity and that shows that Brazil is leading the way."

Maria Imaculada Dutra, a Socialist councillor in the town of Manhuacu who is hoping to run for mayor, said courage, rather than Rousseff, would be her greatest asset in the 2012 election race.

"It's not Dilma running a good government that motivates me. I'm tired of corruption in this town and you need courage to face up to the corrupt," she said.

US not invited as Hugo Chávez launches Latin group

 

A Venezuelan presidential guard stands outside the Teresa Carreno Theater before the Celac summit. Photograph: Jorge Silva/Reuters

Heads of state from across Latin America and the Caribbean flew in to Caracas on Friday for the inaugural meeting of a group designed to counter US influence and improve regional ties.

But the US and Canada, have been sidelined from what the host, Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez, has called "the most important political event in our America in 100 years or more".

Chávez, who is gearing up for presidential elections next year, has grand designs for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or Celac.

Among the leaders for the two-day, 33-nation event are Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff, the Argentinian president Cristina Kirchner, Cuba's Raúl Castro, Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos and Mexico's Felipe Calderón.

"It's great to be here in the land of Bolívar," Paraguay's president Fernando Lugo told television, in reference to Simón Bolívar, the South American liberator. "Bolivar's dream is becoming concrete little by little," he added after being greeted off his plane by a military band.

Jamaica's recently elected prime minister, Andrew Holness, said English-speaking countries in the Caribbean needed closer integration with South America. "Jamaica's future lies as much in the south as it does in the north," he said.

Venezuela's state-controlled television station, VTV, dedicated rolling coverage to the summit, with advertisements exalting the "transcendent" and "historic" event.

"Today the many paths of our America converge in a common space," one commercial enthused.

In Brazil the event received less attention. The foreign pages of O Globo, one of the largest newspapers, focused not on that day's meeting between Chávez and Rousseff but on Hillary Clinton's talks with pro-Burma's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the crisis in Syria.

Analysts said the summit represented a further sign of dwindling US influence in the region.

Pamela Starr, a professor of public diplomacy from the University of Southern California, said it reflected a long-standing Latin America desire to develop an association of nations including Cuba but without the US.

"It is only in recent years, with persistent economic crisis in the north coupled with robust economic growth in most of Latin America, that the region has developed the confidence to go it alone," she said.

But Starr, questioned Venezuela's ability to command significant regional leadership through Celac. "Venezuela is a marginal player at best, even … playing host to this summit," she said, adding that with presidential elections due next year the event could help boost support for Chávez at home.

"Hugo Chávez is once again in a position to score important propaganda points at home and in the region."

Question marks also remain over what powers Celac will hold. "Chávez is using the summit as a desperate effort to reignite his regional leadership which he knows has waned," said Maria Teresa Romero, professor of international relations at Venezuela's Central University. "He is using this event to make Venezuelans and other nations believe that his leadership is still alive."

Romero said there was a "growing sense of disenchantment" with Chávez across the region. "He still has followers, especially in the Alba [Bolivarian Alternative bloc] and other left-leaning groups throughout Latin America, but the great majority of groups, and NGOs and governments have shied away," she added.

On Thursday, Chávez predicted the new group would eventually eclipse the Washington-based Organisation of American States, or OAS, which he described as "a toothless, old body."

"Celac is born with a new spirit," he said. "It is a platform for people's economic, political and social development."