Sooner or later, this will constitute a major challenge to the hemispheric community.

I saw birds that breed in Greenland in the Gulf, so this is a hemispheric issue.

After ignoring Latin America for years, President George W. Bush is desperately trying to improve hemispheric relations.

Asia revolves around ASEAN, and the Americas around NAFTA and Mercosur. Europe, too, needs to help organize a large hemispheric region.

Today there may be little that the hemispheric community can do about the situation in Bolivia, and yet it is fraught with danger for everyone.

Complete estrangement from the US in Latin America will not only harm hemispheric relations, but may discredit broader ideas that are closely associated with the US.

It is true, they say, that the Bush administration launched the Free Trade Area of the Americas, but hemispheric free trade looks as distant today as ever.

But every now and then, the Summit an American initiative launched by US President Bill Clinton in 1994 actually helps to place key issues on the hemispheric table.

The region is pressing ahead with economic integration as it negotiates United States proposals for a Central American Free Trade Agreement and the hemispheric Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.

4. Welcomes the efforts of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to strengthen cooperation with inter American institutions in various fields, including hemispheric integration, statistics and women and development

5. Also welcomes the efforts of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to strengthen cooperation with inter American institutions in various fields, including hemispheric integration, statistics, women and development

But the most significant issue coming to the fore in hemispheric relations is immigration. Traditionally a Mexican, Central American, and Caribbean matter, it has now reached Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and beyond.

See, for example, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, South American unity may no longer be a distant dream , 11 April 2005, cited on Venezuela Information Office site at www.rethinkvenezuela.com news 04 11 05coha.html.

4. Expresses its appreciation to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for the initiatives to strengthen cooperation with inter American institutions in various fields, in particular, hemispheric integration, statistics, women and development

But a clear line in the sand has been drawn between Latin American countries that want to pursue regional integration on their own terms, and those who see hemispheric integration as directed by the US.

If the US and Latin America can face up to the challenges of trade and immigration together, the next US president may leave a weightier mark on the hemispheric relationship than any American leader in three generations.

Is it willing to look the other way while a small nation destroys its democracy, violates human rights, and breaches its international covenants? If so, that hemispheric community will prove to be remarkably inconsistent, given a second conundrum Honduras.

Ecuador and Peru came to an accord formalized in the Rio Protocol, signed on January 29, 1942, in favor of hemispheric unity against the Axis Powers in World War II favoring Peru with the territory they occupied at the time the war came to an end.

The OAS has had an historical role in monitoring the decolonization process, within the framework of its earlier agenda item on Non Autonomous Territories in the American Hemisphere. Whilst this is no longer an active OAS agenda item, the self determination of the territories in the Americas remains very much a hemispheric issue, and can be viewed within the scope of the OAS Democracy Charter.