Nathan

WORLD VIEWS: U.S. snubbed at first South American-Arab summit; tourism down in U.S. as border controls discourage visitors; Taiwanese president pressured to deal with Beijing: "'The symbolic message of the snub couldn't be huger,' observed Larry Birns, head of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs, a nonpartisan Washington think tank specializing in Latin America. '[M]ind-boggling in its significance,' as Birns put it, the big snub came at the Bush administration's expense. The offending event: the first-ever Summit of South American and Arab Countries, which brought together representatives from 34 countries in Latin America and the Arab world to discuss trade and foreign-policy issues, completely bypassing the United States. "