Affable Americas talks produce little action

History may have been made at this weekend's summit of leaders from 35 countries across the Americas, but in the end, words spoke louder than actions.

President Barack Obama did not, as many had hoped, crown the first meeting between US and Cuban leaders in more than 50 years with an announcement to remove the Caribbean nation from a US list of state sponsors of terror.

Nor did he revoke a controversial executive order declaring Venezuela a national security threat, though President Nicolas Maduro's public goading that Mr Obama had refused to meet him, saying "perhaps we're at war and don't know it", appeared to pay off: Caracas said the two leaders held a "serious, frank, even cordial" 10 minutes of talks on the summit sidelines in Panama.

Though the summit ran over by about five hours, as garrulous Latin American leftist leaders over-ran their allotted times - Raul Castro spoke for a marathon 49 minutes, joking that Cuba was owed extra time for all the previous summits from which it had been excluded - leaders failed to agree a final communique.

No one mentioned corruption, one of Latin America's most pressing problems as evidenced by a spiralling graft crisis at Brazilian oil firm, Petrobras. A proposal by Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia to "leave a legacy for the future by creating an Inter-American education system" appeared to fall on deaf ears.

The biggest surprise was the sound of an octogenarian revolutionary paying homage to the leader of his country's most formidable enemy.

Mr Castro, whose brother Fidel triumphed in his Cuban Revolution in 1959, two years before Mr Obama was born, turned his country's traditional "I accuse" into "I excuse" as he defended the US president as an honest man and apologised for a lengthy rant about US aggression that he said Mr Obama could not be blamed for.

Mr Obama, in turn, said the US "is not in the business of [demanding] regime change" in Cuba. After more than an hour of affable talks with Mr Castro, he declared the Cold War over and himself to be "cautiously optimistic" about the road to normalising relations ahead, despite vast challenges and differences outstanding.

But there were limits to the love-in. Clashes between Cuban dissidents and pro-Castro militants at a civil society forum ahead of the summit marred the mood, and distrust ran deep.

While Latin American presidential support for the US-Cuban rapprochement was unanimous, Maritza Mata, a retired Venezuelan teacher and devotee of Mr Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, asked: "Cuba is strategic. What's Obama's real aim?"

There was also widespread criticism of the US executive order against Venezuela.

Evo Morales of Bolivia called it Mr Obama's "biggest error against Latin America", while Brazil's Dilma Rousseff said sternly: "We reject the adoption of sanctions."

There was, however, no overt criticism of Venezuela's jailing of opposition leaders, though Ms Rousseff said South American nations had agreed to "accompany and support political dialogue between the government and opposition of Venezuela".

Diehard Chavistas like Ms Mata, attending a "people's summit" of flag-waving leftist groups at an event decked with banners proclaiming "down with imperialism" and "Cuba and Venezuela, united for ever", hailed progress.

"We won the battle of Panama - we were heard at this summit," exclaimed Kaisy Gomez, who works for a women's social group, Unamujer.

But in fact, Mr Obama was not in the room to listen to Mr Maduro's tirade against US imperialism - or his admission that "I'm not anti-American. I'm a fan of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton" (even though the latter musician is British).

Mr Obama left Panama proclaiming the US relationship with the Americas renewed, and hinted that he would move swiftly to remove Cuba from the terror list.

But even before he begins work to turn summit words into deeds, Republican 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz reminded him of the domestic challenges ahead. Instead of extracting "significant concessions" from Cuba in exchange for rapprochement, "this president has shown he is willing to do what nine previous presidents of both parties would not: cave to a communist dictator in our own hemisphere," Mr Cruz thundered.

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