French veterans Lo’jo, who mix French folk with African and Arabic sounds, picked up the Best Group award and the young Zimbabwean band Mokoomba was chosen as top Newcomer.

The Best Cross Cultural-Collaboration went to Dub Colossus for the blend of Ethiopian roots, reggae and dub beats on their latest album “Dub Me Tender Vol. 1+2″.

Kidjo, originally from Benin, is one of Africa’s biggest singing stars. Over the years she has worked with Prince, sang at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and sold out New York’s Carnegie Hall.

The Best Artist award was given for her live “Spirit Rising” album but was also recognition of her career achievements, Songlines editor-in-chief Simon Broughton told Reuters.

“She’s been around a long time but she’s always inspiring,” he said. “What clinched it was a concert she gave in London in March for Women’s Day. It was breathtaking. I’ve never seen her so exuberant. She bonds people and really makes it special.”

Kidjo, 52, has adopted the mantle of the late South African singer Miriam Makeba as a political voice and campaigns for women’s rights and education in Africa.

“The award is also for what she stands for,” Broughton said.

Lo’jo, from southwest France, has also been around a long time and the band’s latest album, “Cinema el Mundo”, showed them to be as strong as ever.

“They are much better known in the Francophone world than elsewhere. They’ve not been tempted to become more mainstream,” Broughton said.

“They are a quality act, an unusual, interesting group, especially in their connections with West and North Africa.”

YOUNG BANDS AND FANS

The Newcomer winner, Mokoomba, is a young group from Zimbabwe but the horn-driven music is pan-African, bringing in the sounds of Congo, South Africa and other countries. Its “Rising Tide” album sealed the award.

Dub Colossus’ award was recognition of its work over the past 10 years in popularizing Ethiopian music and blending it with modern beats.

“It’s risen from being unknown to something hip and really getting an audience. There’s a lot of people fusing Ethiopian and Western sounds so they represent a wide movement and are bringing in a lot of young people,” Broughton said.

World music has had mixed fortunes in the past year.

The live scene was still healthy, with a host of performers filling venues in London and elsewhere, Songlines publisher Paul Geoghegan said.

But the recording scene was very difficult for artists, record labels and distributors due to the closure of record stores and declining CD sales. The collapse of British chain HMV, whose shops stocked a wide variety of world music, was a big blow, he said.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Kohima was picked over the more celebrated battles of D-Day and Waterloo in a contest organised by the National Army Museum.

Rorke’s Drift in the 1879 Zulu War and the Battle of Aliwal in the Anglo-Sikh War in Punjab in 1846 brought up the rear.

“Great things were at stake in a war with the toughest enemy any British army has had to fight,” historian Robert Lyman said, making the case for Kohima in a debate at the museum.

If Lieutenant General William Slim’s army of British, Indian, Gurkha and African troops had lost, the consequences for the allied cause would have been catastrophic, he said.

The contest’s criteria included a battle’s political and historical impact, the challenges the troops faced, and the strategy and tactics employed.

Waterloo had topped an online poll which produced a list of 20 land battles fought since the English Civil War. The top five were debated on Saturday before going to an audience vote.

The winner was something of a surprise given the enduring prominence of Waterloo and D-Day/Normandy in Britain. Indeed, the troops who fought in India and Burma in World War II called themselves “The Forgotten Army”.

The Battle of Imphal/Kohima took place in 1944 in Nagaland when Japanese troops poured over the Burmese border to strike at India. Fought over a vast area of jungle and mountain, it was marked by vicious hand-to-hand fighting.

The successful British defence meant they were then able to push into Burma and roll back the Japanese from mainland Asia.

“The victory was of a profound significance because it demonstrated categorically to the Japanese that they were not invincible. This was to be very important in preparing the entire Japanese nation to accept defeat,” Lyman said.

He suggested that one reason the battle is relatively unfeted was because Britain itself played it down due to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s opposition to empire.

In fact, Lyman said: “This was the last real battle of British Empire and the first battle of the new India.”

The Indian troops “weren’t fighting for the British or the Raj but for a newly emerging and independent India and against the totalitarianism of Japan.”

He ranked it with Midway, El Alamein and Stalingrad as the main turning point battles of World War II.

His adversary in debate, former Parachute Regiment Colonel Stuart Tootal, argued a strong case for the D-Day landings and subsequent Battle for Normandy against Hitler’s Germany in 1944.

Although popular culture, including such movies as “Saving Private Ryan”, has highlighted the American role and relegated the British to supporting cast, the operation was under the command of Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

His planning skills and ability to keep the Germans guessing was crucial to its success. The capture of Caen by British and Canadian troops allowed the Americans to break out, Tootal said.

The victory decided the outcome of World War II, including denying the Russians total control of Berlin. It’s sheer scale and the risk involved made it Britain’s greatest battle, said Tootal, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan .

“What would have happened if it had failed? The war would have gone on for two or three more years, killing on a mass scale would have continued. And what would have happened to the Jews? The Nazis would have completed the Holocaust.”

BRILLIANT WELLINGTON

The Duke of Wellington’s victory over Napoleon’s French army at Waterloo in 1815 had gone into the final as favourite but was unseated.

Historian Iain Gale said its consequences were immense for Britain and it has “permeated our nation and it’s conscience”.

Wellington was a brilliant commander, able to read a battle and adapt as it unfolded. Gale lauded the courage of the British soldiers formed up in squares to hold off the French cavalry.

But he acknowledged a certain amount of luck was involved and the arrival of General Blucher’s Prussian forces at the height of the battle was crucial.

Waterloo ended decades of conflict with the French across the globe and Napoleon’s attempts to dominate Europe.

“It prepared the way for the British Empire and the modern world as we know it,” Gale said.

Rorke’s Drift, when 150 British soldiers fought off 4,000 Zulu warriors, has a cherished place in British popular lore. But it lost out in the contest, possibly because despite the heroism, it was of little ultimate consequence.

“No great general, no great strategy, just British soldiers, unready for combat, fighting against overwhelming odds, with no hope of relief,” debater Craig Appleton said.

A cheer went up – and not surprisingly.

Since Islamist militants seized control of Mali’s north
following a military coup in March 2012, the country has been
convulsed by conflict.

Its musical community, whose singers and players have won
worldwide acclaim, has been targeted by the hardline Islamists
bent on imposing sharia, or Islamic law. Concerts have been
banned in northern cities, clubs closed, instruments smashed and
burned, musicians harassed and forced to flee.

This weekend’s “Sahara Soul” concert at London’s Barbican,
featuring Bassekou Kouyate, Sidi Toure and the desert blues band
Tamkirest, showcased the country’s musical riches and called for
peace. But it also indicated that there were differing visions
of what any peace might entail.

“There is just one message – peace,” Sidi Toure told Reuters
backstage before the concert. “If you filled this room with gold
and diamonds, it would not be more important than peace.”

Toure hails from Gao on the banks of the River Niger in the
Sahel region and performs Songhai folk songs with a trance-like
beat. Music, he said, was ingrained in Malian life.

“When you feel bad, only music can cure you. We have many
different kinds – for your first child, for weddings, for
parties.”

But it has been forbidden in Gao since an official of the
Ansar Din (Followers of God) militant group stated in August:
“We do not want Satan’s music.”

“At the cultural centre, they made a fire in the street of
all the instruments. Now all the musicians have left, for
Bamako, for Niger, for Burkina Faso,” Toure said.

Malians welcomed the French military action three weeks ago
as Islamist forces advanced on the capital Bamako, he said.

“Without the French intervention, that would have been the
end of Mali. The French saved Mali,” he said.

WELLSPRING OF THE BLUES

Until the war pushed Mali to the forefront of U.S. and
European security concerns with fears the Islamists would turn
the country into a base for international attacks, Mali was
probably best defined for the outside world by its music.

It is seen as the wellspring of American blues, transported
to Mississippi and Memphis by slavery.

Artists such as Amadou and Mariam, the blind couple from
Bamako, have sold millions of records and fill concert halls
worldwide. The desert blues band Tinariwen, born out of the
Touareg rebellion, won a Grammy award last year.

The annual Festival in the Desert, held near the fabled city
of Timbuktu, was a pilgrimage for many foreigners, among them
ex-Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and U2′s Bono. That will
not happen this year.

“Today Mali is different, because of terrorism by those who
want to impose sharia; no music, no TV, no telephones, no
democracy. This is no good,” Kouyate told the audience.

Kouyate, from Segou, southern Mali, plays a wooden acoustic
instrument called the ngoni, a forebear of the banjo. He
recalled that on the day of the military coup last March, his
band had just started recording their latest album in Bamako.
They heard the shooting in the streets.

His final song, “Ne me fatigue pas”, takes aim at the coup
that brought down an elected government.

The coup gave new impetus to a long-running Touareg
separatist rebellion in the Sahara desert of the north. That,
however, was swiftly taken over by the Islamists, many said to
be foreign veterans of the Afghan and Libyan battlefields.

Last week a host of Malian musicians, including Amadou and
Mariam, recorded a song for peace in Bamako under the banner
Voices United for Mali.

“Malian people look to us,” singer Fatoumata Diawara, the
project organizer, said in Bamako. “They have lost hope in
politics. But music has always brought hope in Mali.”

The lyrics refer directly to the situation in the north,
saying: “Such catastrophe, such desolation … tell the North
that our Mali is one nation, indivisible!”

TOUAREG STRUGGLE

The Touareg band Tamikrest took to the stage in London in
desert robes to play their songs of struggle, the hypnotic
guitar jams punctuated by ululations.

But leader Ousmane Ag Mossa made clear beforehand that
although he was all for peace, Malian solidarity was a different
matter.

The government based in the south was just as much his
problem as the Islamists, he told Reuters.

“We have never seen Mali as one country. Our movement is for
our independence. We are the children of suffering. There have
been a lot of massacres against us. It was always like this.”

“Now they want to destroy us under the banner of fighting
terrorism. The message of the music is always peace. But the
musicians of the south are only finding out now what has been
going on,” he said.

As a boy in the 1990s, Ousmane lost family in a period of
intense warfare between the army and the Touareg. He took up the
guitar as the best way to get his people’s message across,
founding the band, now based in Algeria, in the city of Kaled in
2006.

“If we had been treated well and fairly, our situation would
have been different. We have been treated as a bunch of nomads
only good for herding livestock. We are not seen as Malians,” he
said, speaking in Tamashek, the Touareg language.

“People who are interested now are only smelling the smoke
of the fire we have been in for a century,” he said.

For the show’s finale, the three bands joined together on
stage for a rousing jam fusing electric guitars, ngonis, scratch
percussion and vocals.

A fleeting moment of unity, or a sign that Malians might one
day achieve harmony?

(Reporting by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Will Waterman)

The diocese asked him to defend an errant priest, accused of abusing dozens of children in a rural community. Mouton reluctantly agreed to take on the task.

What followed over the next few years was the uncovering of an institution riddled with pedophile priests on a national scale and efforts at high levels in the Catholic Church to hide the problem away.

For Mouton, it meant the end of his law career, health problems, and anger, depression and guilt.

After many years of writing from his self-imposed exile in France, he finally tells his story in the novel “In God’s House”. It is a harrowing read laden with sickening detail, but also for Mouton, a work of atonement.

“There’s not a day I don’t think about the children. When I was writing the book, whenever I wanted to quit, I thought about the victims and their families,” he told Reuters.

In person, Mouton, now aged 65, looks like a southern lawyer from central casting, with a head of thick white hair and a sonorous Louisiana drawl.

He chose to tell the story in novel form although the characters, from the lawyer to a senior Vatican official who proves an obstacle to addressing the scandal – are based on real figures.

“The novel is a dramatic experience. My experience was a traumatic one. Every day there were revelations. I didn’t want to believe, the country didn’t want to believe,” he said.

Mouton and his family – Cajuns whose ancestors came to Louisiana as part of the Acadian diaspora – were strongly Catholic. His family had donated land for the cathedral in Lafayette and built schools, churches and a seminary.

When he first agreed to defend the priest, Father Gilbert Gauthe, he believed he was dealing with an isolated case.

“I believed priests were somehow superior. I had never heard of a priest having sex with a child. I could not believe a Catholic priest could do this. I thought he was just one then it all unraveled. In that diocese alone there were a dozen more.”

The church preferred to deal with the problem by paying off victims’ families. But one family wanted to see justice done.

As a lawyer, Mouton believed Gauthe had the right to a fair trial. He soon realized the church was deeply compromised. It had known about Gauthe’s crimes since his days in seminary but had moved him around various parishes, where the abuses continued.

The church was in effect harboring criminals, Mouton said.

“I did start out on the side of the church. I couldn’t imagine they had foreknowledge,” he said.

Mouton joined forces with Father Tom Doyle, a canon lawyer in the Vatican Embassy in Washington, and Father Michael Peterson, a psychiatrist priest who treated sexually deviant clergymen. The two had heard many other cases across Louisiana and the United States – and attempts to bury the problem.

Believing they had the support of the church hierarchy, they set out on a crusade to bring it into the open and seek justice for the victims.

They spent a year working on a document detailing the scale of the abuse, the steps the church should take to address it and the consequences if it did not. It stated that there was a national crisis involving dozens, if not hundreds, of priests.

“It told them what the deal was – you’ll lose 1,000 priests and a billion dollars.”

They hoped to present the document to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for debate. But after a meeting in a Chicago hotel in 1985 with a cardinal, they were told to kill it.

“They put the reputation of the church above the value of the little children. They did all they could to avoid scandal.”

FALL FROM GRACE

“In God’s House” details a powerful apparatus at work involving local politicians, expensive lawyers, insurance companies and bishops. It also reached into the Vatican, which Mouton says considered the institution above the law.

It also shows the devastation of the victims and their families – shame, anger and frustration as well as physical damage. Many were told that to seek redress would be disloyal to the church, adding further conflict to their emotions.

Mouton himself suffered verbal abuse and even death threats in the community for defending Gauthe. He was accused of trying to extort the church for exorbitant fees.

He put up an insanity plea for Gauthe but the priest himself insisted he was sane. He was sentenced to 20 years.

However, a senior jurist in Louisiana involved himself personally in Gauthe’s case. Instead of going to a prison that was a treatment facility for pedophiles, the priest was sent to a prison where juveniles were held. He was released after serving only half of his sentence.

Gauthe was picked up in Texas soon after his release for molesting a 3-year-old boy, but put on probation rather than being sent back to prison.

Mouton’s marriage broke up and he became an alcoholic.

“It was a cataclysmic event. It broke me in half. I did fall from grace,” he said.

It took many years but subsequent events have vindicated Mouton as widespread sexual abuse by priests came to light across the United States and the world, from Ireland to Australia.

The church and its insurance companies have paid out more than $2 billion dollars in the United States, bishops have been disgraced, and its reputation has suffered to the point that the faithful have deserted in droves.

Mouton now lives in southern France close to the Pyrenees with his second wife Melony and travels frequently to Spain, Mexico and other countries.

He is still bitter about the cover-ups and that many of those responsible have never been brought to justice. Nor has the problem been eradicated, he believes.

“I don’t think we’ve reached critical mass on it yet. The question is what can the church do? The church needs to release all the documents and demand the resignations of those involved.”

The novel is dedicated to Scott Anthony Gastal, the first child to testify in court against a bishop, and to the victims and their families, who, he says, “were abandoned not by their God, but by their Church”.

“I was haunted by my experience. I felt I had to do something,” he said.

(Reporting by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Paul Casciato)

Suffering deep recession and with their citizens protesting
at job losses and austerity measures, the two European countries
hope the Ibero-American Summit of leaders in the historic port
of Cadiz can open up desperately needed business opportunities.

But in an incident that testified to Spain’s woes, police
fired tear gas and rubber bullets at a group of more than 200
shipyard workers who rallied outside the Cadiz docks to protest
against reductions in work. The demonstrators had thrown rocks
at the police, a Reuters witness said.

In contrast to Iberia’s downturn, figures released by the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast
growth in Latin America of 3.2 percent in 2012 and 4 percent in
2013.

“More Latin America in Europe and Spain is a recipe to
confront the present challenges,” Spanish Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy said in his opening speech at the gathering.

The plight of the former imperial powers has lent purpose to
a summit that in recent years had come to resemble a redundant,
ceremony-laden event dominated by the antics of populist leaders
such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez is not attending the meeting in Cadiz, which
prospered in the centuries of Spanish rule in the Americas.

Although Spain’s King Juan Carlos is the host, the most
important figure at the summit is Dilma Rousseff, president of
economic powerhouse Brazil.

Spain has made clear it regards Portuguese-speaking Brazil
as vital to its salvation.

It is already the second-biggest foreign investor in Brazil
and Rajoy wants Spanish companies to get a slice of
infrastructure projects, such as ports, highway and airports,
including those for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in
Brazil. Rousseff will stay on in Spain for bilateral talks.

Major Spanish firms such as Telefonica and banking
giant Santander now rely on their Latin American
operations, and Brazil in particular, for a hefty chunk of their
profits as local markets decline.

On Friday, Spanish technology company Indra said a
quarter of its revenue this year will come from Latin America,
where its sales have increased 12-fold over the last six years.
Brazil is its second biggest market after Spain.

SOLIDARITY

Ibero-American Secretary-General Enrique Iglesias said in
his opening speech the summit offered “hope and solidarity”.

“Spain and Portugal have in the Ibero-American relationship
an essential point for stimulating growth,” he said.
“International cooperation can speed up recovery and reduce the
social cost, above all unemployment.”

Iglesias called for more credit to finance investment in
infrastructure projects and to expand exports.

But he warned Latin America could not remain immune to the
problems roiling other world markets if low growth continued. He
also urged the continent to embrace free trade and to diversify
its economies to further reduce poverty and inequality.

The summit is also focusing on finding ways to get small-
and medium-sized companies from Spain and Portugal i nto Latin
America and its market of nearly 600 million people.

Alicia Barcena, executive secretary for the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), urged
Spanish banks to finance such businesses.

“Spain has to help us here,” she told a business forum.

Spanish banks, crippled by the collapse in 2008 of a 10-year
building boom, have slashed lending to focus on recapitalising
to compensate for hundreds of billions of euros in bad loans.

Flemming Barton, analyst at CM Capital Markets in Madrid,
warned against anyone getting their hopes up too high.

He told Reuters that certain big Spanish infrastructure
firms could largely forget about winning lucrative concessions
in the short to medium term because of their debt and funding
problems.

“As a government you don’t want to sell concessions,
especially those viewed as strategic – i.e. roads, airports – or
providing key services to companies which are perceived to be
weak, overstretched or at risk, as you might find yourself
having to intervene, even sell them off again, in a worst case
situation,” he said.

Portugal is also keen to attract Brazilian investment for
the privatisations it has been forced to carry out under the
terms of its euro zone bailout.

But it turned to China for the sale of a stake in utility
Energias de Portugal (EDP) last year, rejecting Brazil’s
Eletrobras despite heavy lobbying.

In the privatisation of airport operator ANA, Colombian
construction company Odinsa is involved in a bidding consortium,
as is an Argentine and Brazilian firm. Colombian-Brazilian
tycoon German Efromovich is vying to buy Portuguese airline TAP.

Big Portuguese companies still have large stakes in Brazil,
including EDP and Portugal Telecom, which have helped support
them after earnings slumped at home due to the recession.

While the summit made much of solidarity in troubled times,
there are cracks in some relationships, especially those
involving left-leaning governments.

Spain and Argentina are still in dispute over Argentina’s
nationalisation of Spanish oil major Repsol’s YPF unit
in April. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez cried off the
summit on health grounds.

“YPF underlines potential risks, especially when investing
in strategic industries,” Barton said.

Suffering deep recession and with their citizens demonstrating against job losses and public spending cuts, the two European countries hope the Ibero-American Summit can open up desperately needed trading opportunities.

Figures released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Friday highlighted the continents’ contrasting fortunes by forecasting growth in Latin America of 3.2 percent in 2012 and 4 percent in 2013.

“Latin America offers a huge opportunity for Spain. We have the language, we have the culture, we have many years of investing there,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said at a business forum on the summit’s first day.

“Many achievements – and many errors. Spain and Portugal are Latin America’s closest friends.”

The plight of the former imperial powers has lent purpose to a summit that in recent years has resembled a redundant, ceremony-laden event dominated by the antics of populist leaders such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez is not attending this meeting taking place in the historic port city of Cadiz that prospered in the centuries of Spanish rule in the Americas.

Although the official host is Spain’s King Juan Carlos, the most important figure is Dilma Rousseff, president of economic powerhouse Brazil.

Spain has made clear it regards Portuguese-speaking Brazil as vital to its salvation. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy wrote this week in Brazilian magazine Epoca Negocios that he wanted “more Brazil in Spain and more Spain in Brazil”.

Spain is already the second-biggest foreign investor in Brazil and Rajoy wants Spanish companies to get a slice of infrastructure projects, such as ports, highway and airports, including those for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Brazil. Rousseff will stay on in Spain for bilateral talks.

Major Spanish companies such as Telefonica (TEF.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and banking giant Santander (SAN.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) now rely on their Latin American operations, and Brazil in particular, for a hefty chunk of their profits as local markets decline.

On Friday Spanish technology company Indra (IDR.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said a quarter of its revenue this year will come from Latin America, where its sales have increased 12-fold over the last 6 years. Brazil is its second biggest market after Spain.

WORKING FOR KOREANS

However, the summit is also focusing on finding ways to get small and medium-sized companies from Spain and Portugal into Latin America and its market of nearly 600 million people.

Alicia Barcena, executive secretary for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), urged Spanish banks to finance such businesses.

“Spain has to help us here,” she told the business forum.

Spanish banks, crippled by the collapse in 2008 of a 10-year building boom, have severely curtailed lending to focus on recapitalizing to compensate for hundreds of billions of euros in bad loans.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria, a Mexican, said Latin America still needed professional expertise, infrastructure, education and technology.

“If we don’t change this trend we will all be working for the Koreans,” he said.

Portugal is also keen to attract Brazilian investment for the privatizations it has been forced to carry out under the terms of its euro zone bailout.

But it turned to China for the sale of a stake in utility Energias de Portugal (EDP) last year, rejecting Brazil’s Eletrobras (ELET6.SA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) despite heavy lobbying.

In the privatization of airport operator ANA, a Colombian construction company, Odinsa, is involved in a bidding consortium, as is an Argentine and Brazilian firm. Colombian-Brazilian tycoon German Efromovich is vying to buy Portuguese flag carrier TAP.

Big Portuguese companies still have large stakes in Brazil, including EDP and Portugal Telecom, which have helped support them after earnings slumped at home due to the recession.

While the summit reaffirms historic ties and is making much of solidarity in troubled times, there are cracks in some relationships, especially those involving left-leaning governments.

Spain and Argentina are still in dispute over the nationalization of Spanish oil major Repsol’s (REP.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) YPF unit in April. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez cried off the summit on health grounds.

“We have much to discuss with Argentina,” Garcia-Margallo said.

(Additional reporting by Tomas Gonzalez in Cadiz and Axel Bugge in Lisbon; Editing by Fiona Ortiz and Robert Woodward)

In recent decades, Spanish and Portuguese businessmen
roamed the continent in a wave of investment known as the
“Reconquest”.

But leaders meeting here for the Ibero-American Summit on
Friday and Saturday face a relationship that has changed
profoundly in the past few years. The former colonies may hold
the keys to their ex-masters’ salvation.

Spain and Portugal’s economies are just about shipwrecked
amid the euro zone crisis. Both have needed outside support to
keep afloat and their people have taken to the streets to
protest against austerity measures and job losses.

Latin America is for the most part prospering, with average
growth at more than 4 percent last year. It is no longer a weak
partner.

Plotting a new economic course and exploring new
opportunities in trade and investment in these troubled times
will be one of the main purposes of the Cadiz gathering.

“Before, Spain and Portugal could set the agenda,” said
Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American
Studies associate at King’s College, London.

“Now the relationship is much more about the economy, about
necessity. Spain and Portugal really need those markets. It’s
also an opportunity to sit down with countries that understand
what it’s like to go through economic crisis.”

The depths of despair for ordinary Spaniards and Portuguese
were evident in recent days. Millions of people took to the
streets in both countries and elsewhere in Europe on Wednesday
angry over cuts in welfare, pensions and public service jobs.

A woman in Bilbao last week committed suicide as she was
about to be thrown out of her house, shocking the nation and
prompting banks to reassess their policies.

One in four Spanish workers is now jobless in a crisis
driven by a property collapse in 2008. In Portugal, unemployment
is nearing 16 percent. Repeating a historical pattern, about
20,000 Spaniards moved to Latin America last year.

The Spanish chamber of commerce in Brazil said it had
received nearly 1,300 resumes in the past year from
professionals interested in working there.

“They are looking for opportunities that don’t exist in
Spain at the moment,” said Maria Luisa Castelo Marin, the
chamber’s executive director.

Spanish companies also rely heavily on profits from their
Latin American operations to compensate for weakness at home.

Telecommunications company Telefonica said last
week it moved from loss to profit as a Latin American
contribution of 49 percent of revenues offset its troubles in
Europe. Banking giant Santander also takes more than 50
percent of its profits from the continent, a hefty chunk of that
in Brazil.

“This summit is taking place at a time of great problems for
Spain and Portugal,” Ibero-American Secretary General Enrique
Iglesias told El Pais newspaper. “The central theme is that we
are looking for a new relationship with Spain and Portugal.”

He noted the frenzied activity by Iberian investors in Latin
America in the past 20 years and said more opportunities were
there to explore, including in energy, infrastructure and
communications.

“It is a very fertile field for Spanish firms,” the veteran
Uruguayan diplomat said.

Iglesias cautioned, however, that Latin America was also
feeling the effects of the world crisis because of reductions in
exports to Europe and a slowing of growth in China.

BRAZIL ON THE RISE

Previous summits have often been dominated by strongmen such
as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, which
provided entertainment if little else. Neither will be present
this time and arguably the most important figure will be Dilma
Rousseff, the president of emerging powerhouse Brazil.

Spanish investment in Brazil stands at about 55 billion
euros. But any Spanish hopes of reciprocal investment – Brazil’s
economy has overtaken Spain’s in size – might be premature.

Rousseff is known to be worried about a possible Spanish and
Portuguese collapse. S he will stay in Spain after the summit for
meetings with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Madrid.

Brazil’s Embraer, the world’s third largest
aircraft-maker, did open a factory in Evora, Portugal, last June
and steelmaker CSN acquired Spanish steelmaker Grupo Alfonso
this year. But these moves may not herald a new trend.

Latin Americans are also keen on winning more investment -
Peruvian President Ollanta Humala will also stay on after the
summit and drop by Portugal to tout Peru’s attractions.

RISK

Spanish companies have run into their fair share of risk in
Latin America, with leftist leaders in Argentina and Venezuela
seizing assets as they nationalise sectors of their economy.

Spanish oil major Repsol lost half of its production after
Argentina nationalised its YPF unit in April.

In Venezuela, Telefonica had $3 billion in profits last year
that it has been unable to repatriate because of strict exchange
rules. There is also Spanish concern that Banco Provincial,
which is owned by owned by BBVA, could be in Chavez’s
sights for nationalisation.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez will not attend the
summit, sending her vice president in her place. Madrid worked
hard to get other leaders to show up following a poor turnout
last year that led to questions over its value.

Still, at least one Latin American held out hope to the
impoverished Iberians of calmer seas ahead.

“We have to enter into a bigger relationship with certain
economies because of their commercial power” said senator
Gabriela Cuevas, head of Mexico’s foreign affairs committee.

“If right now Europe doesn’t look so attractive, sooner or
later it’s going to recover. So now is the time to prepare.”

The clashes have heightened fears that Syria’s civil war with its sectarian dimensions is now spreading into Lebanon, pitting local allies and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against each other.

The Lebanese army promised decisive action to quell the violence, which was touched off by the assassination of a senior intelligence officer last week.

That killing has plunged Lebanon into a political crisis and the army command urged party leaders to be cautious in their public statements so as not to inflame passions further.

It issued the warning after troops and gunmen exchanged fire in Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and on Monday morning while protesters blocked roads with burning tyres.

Many politicians have accused Syria of being behind the killing of Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, an intelligence chief opposed to the Syrian leadership, who was blown up by a car bomb in central Beirut on Friday.

Opposition leaders want Prime Minister Najib Mikati to resign, saying he is too close to Assad and his Lebanese militant ally Hezbollah, which is part of Mikati’s government.

YOUNG VICTIM OF SNIPER

The worst of the clashes since late Sunday took place in the northern city of Tripoli, the scene of previous fighting between Sunni Muslims backing the Syrian insurgents and Alawites sympathetic to Assad.

Six people were killed and about 50 wounded in fighting between the Sunni neighbourhood of Tabbaneh and the Alawite Jebel Mohsen, security and hospital sources said. The two sides exchanged rocket and gunfire, residents said.

Among the victims were a 9-year-old girl shot by a sniper.

Fighting in Beirut occurred on the edge of Tariq al-Jadida, a Sunni Muslim district that abuts Shi’ite Muslim suburbs in the south of the capital.

Residents had earlier reported heavy overnight gunfire around Tariq al-Jadida between gunmen armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Soldiers killed one gunman in Tariq al-Jadida, the army said, a Palestinian from a refugee camp who had shot at them.

The violence escalated on Sunday after thousands of people turned out in Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square for the funeral of Hassan, who was buried with full state honours in an emotionally charged ceremony.

As the funeral ended, hundreds of opposition supporters broke away and tried to storm the nearby government offices, prompting security forces to fire tear gas and shots in the air to repulse them.

The army command said in its statement that Lebanon was going through a critical time.

“We will take decisive measures, especially in areas with rising religious and sectarian tensions, to prevent Lebanon being transformed again into a place for regional settling of scores, and to prevent the assassination of the martyr Wissam al-Hassan being used to assassinate a whole country,” it said.

Troops in full combat gear and armoured personnel carriers stood guard at traffic intersections and government offices, with barbed wire and concrete blocks protecting buildings.

Beirut was noticeably quiet as people stayed at home because they feared being caught in more violence. In the downtown, many shops, offices, restaurants were shut or empty and the area was free of its normal traffic chaos.

Lebanon is still haunted by its 1975-1990 civil war, which made Beirut a byword for carnage and wrecked large parts of the city.

Since then it has undergone an ambitious reconstruction programme and enjoyed periods of economic prosperity due to its role as a trading, financial and tourist centre. All that is now threatened.

POWER VACUUM

The crisis underscores local and international concern that the 19-month-old, Sunni-led uprising against Assad, an Alawite, is dragging in Syria’s neighbours, which include Turkey and Jordan as well as Lebanon.

The slain Hassan was a senior intelligence official who had helped uncover a bomb plot that led to the arrest and indictment in August of a pro-Assad former Lebanese minister.

A Sunni Muslim, he also led an investigation that implicated Syria and the Shi’ite Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon.

Mikati offered to resign at the weekend to make way for a government of national unity, but President Michel Suleiman persuaded him to stay in office to allow time for talks on a way out of the political crisis.

Mikati, a Sunni Moslem, had personal ties to the Assad family before he became prime minister in January last year, two months before the anti-Assad uprising erupted. His cabinet includes Assad’s Shi’ite ally Hezbollah as well as Christian and other Shi’ite politicians close to Damascus.

If he was to stand down before an alternative was worked out, it would mean the collapse of the political compromise that has kept the peace in Lebanon and leave a perilous power vacuum.

Ambassadors from the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France met Suleiman on Monday and appealed to Lebanese leaders to resolve the situation peacefully.

One Western diplomat, asked if he thought the Mikati government would survive, told Reuters: “I think it looks more likely today than yesterday that he will come through in the short term. It will take time to form a consensus on an alternative and in the meantime the security situation needs time to recover.”

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

The army command urged political leaders to be cautious in their public statements so as not to inflame passions further.

It issued the warning after troops and gunmen exchanged fire in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday morning, wounding five people, while protesters blocked roads with burning tires.

In the northern city of Tripoli, four people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl, and 12 wounded in clashes overnight and in the morning, security and medical sources said.

The violence heightened fears that the civil war in Syria next door was spreading into Lebanon, upsetting its delicate political balance and threatening to usher in a new era of bloodshed between Lebanese allies and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Lebanon has been boiling since Friday after Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, an intelligence chief opposed to the Syrian leadership, was assassinated in a car bombing.

Many politicians have accused Syria of being behind the killing and angry protesters tried to storm the government palace after Hassan’s funeral on Sunday.

Opposition leaders want Prime Minister Najib Mikati to resign, saying he is too close to Assad and his Lebanese militant ally Hezbollah, which is part of Mikati’s government.

“The last few hours have proven without doubt that the country is going through a decisive and critical time and the level of tension in some regions is rising to unprecedented levels,” the army said in a statement.

“We will take decisive measures, especially in areas with rising religious and sectarian tensions, to prevent Lebanon being transformed again into a place for regional settling of scores, and to prevent the assassination of the martyr Wissam al-Hassan being used to assassinate a whole country.”

Troops in full combat gear and armored personnel carriers guarded traffic intersections and government offices on Monday, with barbed wire and concrete blocks protecting buildings.

Beirut was noticeably quieter than usual as people stayed at home because they feared more violence. In the downtown, many normally busy cafes and coffee shops were empty or shut and the area was free of the habitual traffic chaos.

Lebanon is still haunted by its 1975-1990 civil war, which made Beirut a byword for carnage and wrecked large parts of the city.

Since then it has undergone an ambitious reconstruction program and enjoyed periods of economic prosperity due to its role as a trading, financial and tourist centre. All that is now threatened.

The army statement appealed to all Lebanese to act responsibly and “not to let emotional reactions control the situation”. Troops would stamp out any violence, it said.

GUNFIGHTS IN THE CITY

The clashes in Beirut on Monday morning took place on the edge of Tariq al-Jadida, a Sunni Muslim district that neighbors Shi’ite Muslim suburbs in the south of the capital.

Residents had earlier reported heavy overnight gunfire around Tariq al-Jadida between gunmen armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

In Tripoli, a 9-year-old girl shot by a sniper was one of three people killed in overnight clashes there. Nine people were wounded, medical and security sources said.

The sources said the two dead men were from the Sunni Muslim district of Bab al-Tabbaneh and were killed after gunmen there exchanged rocket and gunfire with the mainly Alawite neighborhood of Jebel Mohsen.

In a later incident on Monday morning, a woman was killed and three people wounded by gunfire in the Alawite district. Tripoli has frequently been hit by clashes between Sunnis and Alawites sympathetic to different sides in the Syria war.

The violence escalated after thousands of people had turned out in Beirut’s downtown Martyrs’ Square for the funeral for Hassan, who was buried with full state honors in an emotionally charged ceremony.

As the funeral ended, hundreds of opposition supporters broke away and tried to storm the nearby prime minister’s office, prompting security forces to fire tear gas and shots in the air to repulse them.

Opposition leaders appealed for calm.

“We want peace, the government should fall, but we want that in a peaceful way. I call on all those who are in the streets to pull back,” former prime minister Saad al-Hariri said on Sunday evening.

SYRIA LINKS

The crisis underscores local and international concern that the 19-month-old uprising against Assad is dragging in Syria’s neighbors Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

Sunni-led rebels are fighting to overthrow Assad, who is from the Alawite minority that has its roots in Shi’ite Islam. Lebanon’s religious communities are divided between those that support Assad and those that back the rebels.

Hassan, 47, was a senior intelligence official who had helped uncover a bomb plot that led to the arrest and indictment in August of a pro-Assad former Lebanese minister.

A Sunni Muslim, he also led an investigation that implicated Syria and the Shi’ite Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon.

Damascus and Hezbollah have condemned Hassan’s killing.

Mikati offered to resign at the weekend to make way for a government of national unity but President Michel Suleiman persuaded him to stay in office to allow time for talks on a way out of the political crisis.

Ambassadors from the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France met Suleiman on Monday and appealed to Lebanese leaders to resolve the situation peacefully. They expressed support for Suleiman’s efforts to start a dialogue among politicians.

One Western diplomat, asked if the Mikati government would survive, told Reuters: “I think it looks more likely today than yesterday that he will come through in the short term. It will take time to form a consensus on an alternative and in the meantime the security situation needs time to recover.”

(Writing by Angus MacSwan in Beirut; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Sunday’s clashes fed into a growing political crisis in Lebanon linked to the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Opposition leaders and their supporters accuse Syria of being behind the car bombing that killed Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan on Friday. They say Mikati is too close to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese ally Hezbollah, which is part of Mikati’s government.

Thousands turned out in downtown Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square for Hassan’s funeral, which also served as a political rally. The violence erupted after an opposition leader demanded that Mikati step down to pave the way for talks on the crisis.

A group marched to the prime minister’s office, then overturned barriers, pulled apart barbed wire coils and threw steel rods, stones and bottle at soldiers and police.

Security forces responded by shooting into air and firing teargas, forcing the protesters to scatter.

On Sunday night, gunmen armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades exchanged fire in southern districts of Beirut, security sources said, and residents could hear the sound of ambulance sirens.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the clashes in the capital, but in the northern city of Tripoli a 9-year-old girl was killed by a sniper and several people were wounded in clashes.

Gunmen have been patrolling the streets in Tripoli, scene of previous clashes between Sunnis and Alawites sympathetic to different sides in the Syria war.

Opposition leader Saad al-Hariri urged supporters to refrain from any more violence.

“We want peace, the government should fall but we want that in a peaceful way. I call on all those who are in the streets to pull back,” Hariri said on the Future Television channel.

SECTARIAN TENSIONS

Sunday’s events highlighted how the 19-month-old uprising against Assad has sharpened deep-seated sectarian tensions in Lebanon, which is still scarred from its 1975-90 civil war.

Sunni-led rebels are fighting to overthrow Assad, who is from the Alawite minority, which has its roots in Shi’ite Islam. Lebanon’s religious communities are divided between those that support Assad and those that back the rebels.

Hassan, 47, was a senior intelligence official who had helped uncover a bomb plot that led to the arrest and indictment in August of a pro-Assad former Lebanese minister.

A Sunni Muslim, he also led an investigation that implicated Syria and the Shi’ite Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon.

Damascus and Hezbollah have condemned Hassan’s killing.

But mourners at Martyrs’ Square accused Syria of involvement and called for Mikati to quit. One banner read “Go, go Najib” echoing the slogans of the Arab Spring.

The violence broke out after Fouad al-Siniora, a former prime minister, said the opposition rejected any dialogue to overcome the political crisis caused by Hassan’s killing unless the government first resigned.

“No talks before the government leaves, no dialogue over the blood of our martyrs,” Siniora said to roars of approval from the crowd.

Mikati said on Saturday he had offered to resign to make way for a government of national unity, but that he had accepted a request by President Michel Suleiman to stay in office to allow time for talks on a way out of the political crisis.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, Leila Bassam and Samia Nakhoul,; Editing by Giles Elgood and Mohammad Zargham)