BRAZIL: Criticism of US foreign policy dominated the World Social Forum Peace Conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which drew to a close urging that a democratic mediation mechanism be set up to deal with conflicts.
The peace conference manifesto, released at the conclusion of the forum on Sunday, said: "The United States moved to impose its will by force" in its response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington, and "a new Cold War climate was installed in the world". These were among declarations signed by conference organisers Brazil's Workers Union, the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, and the Rio Grande do Sul regional government.
"The United Nations definitively lost its role, the other capitalist powers and nearly all the other governments of the world delegated to the United States the role of permanent terror agents," the text added.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner from 1992, Ms Rigoberta Menchu, said the United Nations had been undermined as the United States developed its war on terrorism in the wake of the attacks.
"The only instrument that international society had to mediate conflicts was eroded," she said.
Ms Menchu also expressed concern that the events of September 11th had led to "a redistribution of the powers at world level that has not necessarily benefited the population".
Another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mr Adolfo Perez Ezquivel of Argentina, denounced what he called the US will to "remilitarise the South American continent".
Condemnation of the US military intervention in Afghanistan was a constant theme during the conference, timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum, normally held in Davos, Switzerland but moved to New York for this year. Another summit on the fringes, the World Parliamentary Forum, concluded on Sunday with a condemnation of US policies, including the likely escalation in the US war on terrorism.
The forum of some 1,155 parliamentarians from 40 countries "condemned" in its concluding statement, remarks by members of the US administration "in which Iran, Iraq and North Korea are declared the next targets of unilateral military attacks" by Washington.