Organization of American States Awakens

WASHINGTON â€”  When China vetoed the deployment of U.N. troops to oversee a peace agreement in Guatemala at the beginning of the year, anxious Guatemalans telephoned the Organization of American States to ask if it would send observers to fill the void.

Never mind that the Chinese quickly relented on the issue. The mere fact that someone had called the OAS for help set off a round of self-congratulation at the organization’s ornate headquarters in Washington.

“At least it shows that we are noticed now,� boasted an OAS official.

For many years, hardly anyone ever noticed the OAS, even though it is the world’s oldest political association of nations (107 years) and no other body exclusively links the United States with its neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean.

So thoroughly is the OAS now awakening from a century of torpor that some critics complain that Cesar Gaviria, the organization’s secretary-general, is too active.

Unlike the diplomats and bureaucrats who previously led the OAS, the 50-year-old Gaviria is a politician--he was president of Colombia from 1990 to 1994--and he has taken such un-OAS-like actions as jetting into Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, last year to defuse a threatened military coup in the country.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a research institute in Washington, dismisses Gaviria as “the quintessential ham� who has accomplished little of substance while attracting a good deal of attention as he rushes from one country in crisis to another. Birns also complains that Gaviria has hurt the morale of the OAS staff by dismissing competent veterans and surrounding himself with high-paid cronies from Colombia.

Some OAS ambassadors chafe under what they regard as Gaviria’s highhanded manner. “The Latins have a different idea of democracy than we have,� a Caribbean ambassador said. “Gaviria makes a decision, and then he asks us for approval.�

Gaviria responds that he could not have taken the sort of quick action that was necessary last year to respond to the crisis in Paraguay if he had waited for approval from OAS ambassadors.

“People talk a lot about preventive diplomacy,� he said in a recent interview. “If we want the OAS to be useful in political terms when we have a crisis, we have to take the course of action swiftly. . . . I know it is risky, but there is no other way to be useful.�

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Gaviria has a staunch defender in the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, Harriet C. Babbitt. “He was elected to bring new energy . . . to the OAS,� she said. “He is a former president and has the demeanor of a former president. He’s not a more traditional secretary-general. He wasn’t elected to be a traditional secretary-general.�

The foundations of the OAS were laid in 1890 when James G. Blaine--a strong force in 19th century Republican Party politics as speaker of the House, senator from Maine, secretary of State and losing candidate for president in 1884--proposed a grouping of Western Hemisphere countries that would arbitrate squabbles between them.

The group, later called the Pan American Union, became a kind of U.S. fiefdom, run by American officials and financed by American money. It was transformed into the OAS in 1948 when the United States decided to make it a bulwark against communism.

But its powers remain limited. It has no right to use troops to put down a coup, although a 1991 agreement empowers its permanent council of 34 ambassadors in Washington to impose economic sanctions.

Gaviria has expanded on the 1991 resolution by helping defuse crises even before OAS ambassadors have time to assemble in Washington.

The most notable example was Paraguay. Gaviria, in neighboring Bolivia at the time of the crisis, said he flew to Asuncion by Bolivian government plane only after Paraguayan President Juan Carlos Wasmosy “called me and said, ‘OK, I need you here.’ �

Other Latin military commanders probably did more than Gaviria to persuade the Paraguayan army commander to back down, but the presence of the OAS secretary-general--a symbol of Latin commitment to democracy--surely helped.

Gaviria insists that changes have taken hold in Latin America that make the OAS more significant.

“We now have shared values,� he said. “When we talk about democracy, we are talking about the same thing. . . . That was not true 10 years ago.�

Babbitt, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, called the organization “more successful than any other regional political organization on the face of the Earth.�

Many critics, however, have long regarded the organization as bloated and inefficient and badly in need of personnel changes. And Gaviria does not always get high marks for his administrative abilities.

“The OAS had the worst bureaucracy of any organization in Washington,� said Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. “When Gaviria started [making changes], I thought, ‘Great.’ But I soon realized he was kicking out all the strong people.�

In a report at the end of last year, Luis F. Jimenez, an Argentine lawyer who has worked for the OAS for 16 years and is president of its staff association, accused the Gaviria regime of arbitrariness, bad faith in application of international personnel rules and callousness in ordering summary dismissals “that are totally against the human rights of the staff.�

Gaviria’s defenders at both the OAS and the State Department dismiss such complaints as the natural fallout from badly needed staff reductions.

“Any time you try to shake things up,� said a State Department official, “certain personnel will find change threatening.�

Some specialists on Latin America are less concerned about the need to trim staff than about the need to define a new and more dynamic role for the organization. Former Assistant Secretary of State Viron P. Vaky, for example, said that the OAS has failed to serve as a hub for political and economic activity in the hemisphere.

“But you can’t blame the OAS,� he added. “A lot of countries, including the United States, do not take it seriously. . . . A lot of American bureaucrats dismiss it as a feckless organization. When we don’t take it seriously, other countries don’t either.�