Canada, Mexico Winners At Summit

The United States made concessions on free trade and battling corruption, smoothing tense relations with Latin American leaders as the 34-nation Summit of the Americas ended Tuesday.

Canada and Mexico won the biggest prizes from the United States.

CBS News Correspondent Manuel Gallegus reports President Bush promised Canada the chance to bid for contracts to rebuild Iraq that the administration valued at about $4.5 billion.

"They understand the stakes at having a free country in the midst of the Middle East," he said.

A day earlier, Mexican President Vicente Fox accepted an invitation to visit Bush's ranch in Texas and praised his proposal that would allow migrants to work temporarily in the United States.

Others also welcomed Bush's proposal, with Honduran President Ricardo Maduro saying it would "allow us to have closer ties to Latin Americans in the United States."

But countries also complained the region was not doing enough to battle poverty.

"It is time to act once and for all in the collective and primary interests of all of the Americas," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said.

Protesters also criticized the United States, hanging an effigy of Bush on a security barrier and burning it before a wall of riot police.

Bush arrived at this week's summit to find many nations publicly criticizing his free trade stance.

The leaders agreed to support a hemisphere-wide trade area without setting a firm deadline, a concession to Brazil and Venezuela.

The United States had sought a 2005 deadline for the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The summit's final declaration calls for following the FTAA's "established timetable," with no specific date mentioned.

Although the original timetable called for an accord by 2005, recent FTAA talks have stalled on the prickly issues of removing agricultural subsidies and intellectual property rights. Many have questioned whether the original timetable is still realistic.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez instead pushed for a humanitarian fund that could be used to help countries during financial and natural disasters, but said he would sign the document, with reservations.

The draft mentions that leaders will consider Chavez's proposal for an international humanitarian fund.

In addition, the document does not call for banning corrupt governments from future summits, as the United States requested. Instead, the declaration only calls for consultations on countries that don't meet the requirements of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption.

Washington's concessions were aimed in part at reversing the region's increasingly disenchantment with U.S. policy.

In return, countries pledged to "intensify our efforts and strengthen cooperation" to fight terrorist threats. In the last few weeks, Mexico canceled at least two flights because of security concerns.

Brazil has protested new U.S. security measures that require the fingerprinting and photographing of arriving foreigners by doing the same to Americans traveling to Brazil.

Argentina also has sparred with U.S. officials who criticized the Latin American country for visiting Cuba, but not the communist island's dissidents.

"The summit ended with some grousing, to be sure, and Venezuela added the only reservation to the final statement, the Declaration of Nuevo Leon, taking issue with the free trade agreements as the Bush Administration has proposed them. But the summit closed with a sense of unity -- a definite win for an election year president looking for Hispanic support back North of the border," said CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk.

Venezuela's Chavez has criticized U.S. support for a referendum on his recall from office, saying Washington should stop "sticking its noses" in his country's affairs.

On Monday, Chavez refused to attend the summit's official dinner and called the gathering of American leaders a "waste of time."

On Tuesday, he suggested that a percentage of developing countries' foreign debt be dedicated to social causes such as health, education and poverty reduction. The declaration did mention that leaders would consider his proposal for an international humanitarian fund.

"We have to change the model," Chavez said, referring to the free-trade focus the United States and other industrialized nations have placed on economic development. "Let's recognize that we are on a very bad path."

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo said the humanitarian fund Chavez proposed wouldn't "subsidize the developing Latin American countries."

"We are asking that you share the risks with us," he said.

After listening to Caribbean leaders lament the millions who die of AIDS in their region, Bush said leaders need to "work on prevention and treatment" and ensure that countries can distribute drugs as they become available under new international rules.

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent urged leaders to make sure they carry out the summit's initiatives once they leave the northern city of Monterrey.

"There seems to be an absence of political direction once the summit comes to an end," he said.