AIN Special Service November 15

Experts and social scientists from some 24 countries met in Havana for two days to evaluate US military expansion in different regions of the world and to explore the motivations behind that threatening presence.

Sponsored by the Cuban Peace Movement, participants concluded that the control of biodiversity is vital for Washington, particularly oil and drinking water resources of underdeveloped nations. This was pointed to as the objective for the US establishing military bases in many Third World countries.

Analysts noted that of the 737 US military bases abroad, the majority are located in a strategic arc that runs from Latin America and Africa towards Central Asia, Indonesia and Philippines.

Many of those installations were set up as the result of the Bush administration's so-called anti-terrorist crusade. These bases were said to have been established under the disguise of stopping actions carried out by extremists, interrupting drug trafficking or protecting commercial routes - although lately the US has attempted to secure natural resource supplies that are near exhaustion in that country.

To this chain of enclaves must be included those that have the especially reprehensible functions of the detention and torture of so-called 'enemy combatants.' Often held in clandestine conditions are prisoners of war from campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq or other undercover actions in various regions of the world.

Participants at the conference agreed that the US' military presence is a serious threat for poorer nations, whose economic, political and social problems are added to by the direct US control of those nations' natural resources - highly valued by energy, pharmaceutical and biotechnology monopolies.

The specialists meeting in Havana emphasized the fact that there are currently 12 nations with important quantities of natural reserves - seven of those countries in Latin America.

There are plans for the creating of US military bases in places such as Manta, Ecuador and schemes for the not-so-secret deployment of military groups in the vast Amazon jungle; with this often making them impossible to identify.

The conclusion is obvious: there is a serious threat to the

integration of the peoples of the South posed by Washington's military presence. It is indispensable to become aware of the issue of militarization of the Third World and to prioritize it through public opposition and discussion in international forums.