Global Solutions at Cuba Forum

The 11th International Meeting on Globalization and Development Problems, to be opened Monday with the presence of experts from 50 nations, will focus on possible solutions to the world economic crisis.

About 1,500 professionals from economic sciences worldwide will take part in the event, first called in 1998 by Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Esther Aguilera, president of the Forum Academic Committee, stated that the meeting will give a vision from the creation of the financial crisis to its current global nature.

The theoretical work starts today with a speech on the crisis by 2007 Nobel Economy prizewinner Edmond Phelps.

Later, there will be a panel on that phenomenon in Latin America, the United States and Europe, the also president of the National Association of Economists of Cuba said.

Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, the Dominican Republic's Leonel Fernandez, Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Bishop-Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, will attend the forum, taking place until Friday at Havana's International Conference Center.

The forum will also analyze economic integration as a way to respond to the crisis, seen from the financial, productive, energy, environmental spheres, among others.

Representatives from the World Trade Organization, the UN Conference on Trade and Development, and Nobel Economy prizewinners Robert Mundell (1999) and Robert Engle (2003), are to take part in the event.

Also on the list are experts from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, delegates from MERCOSUR, the Latin American Association for Integration, the ALBA Bank, seven economy and finances ministers, and presidents of Central Banks.