Speaking with the Secretary General by the OAS Press and Communications Team.

• Author: Rawlinson, Haydn
• Position: INTER-AMERICAN SYSTEM - Jose Miguel Insulza

"It was a good assembly," said Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, summing up the thirty-sixth regular session of the OAS General Assembly--a restrained description for what was an excellent result, according to general opinion among the members of the Permanent Council at the close of the event in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. This was, strictly speaking, the first meeting of the hemispheric body's ministers of foreign affairs organized by Insulza. He had been in office for one week when he led the 2005 meeting in Fort Lauderdale. He had resigned his position as Chile's interior minister, in an emotional ceremony held at La Moneda palace, at noon on Tuesday, May 24; he boarded an aircraft that night and arrived in Washington at 9 a.m. the next day. By noon he was in his office, where he worked until late in the day with the transition team that received the baton of continuity passed on by Assistant Secretary General Luigi Einaudi, then in charge of the Organization. On Thursday, May 26, at a special meeting of the Permanent Council, Insulza was installed as Secretary General of the OAS. Seven days later, on June 2, Insulza was in Fort Lauderdale, directing the work of the thirty-fifth General Assembly.

One year later, the efforts of the small team under his leadership culminated in an assembly that dealt openly and transparently with topics that had never before been discussed. Financial issues, for example, and other new concerns--such as migration, energy, and communications--were debated with candor and a positive mindset. Notable was the leadership and style of a man who ensured coherence between the internal and the external, a key element in bringing about the implementation of the mandates handed down by the Permanent Council. Crystallizing the policies set by the OAS requires an effective, harmonious, and strong organization, eager to pursue those goals; and, of course, it also requires the funding necessary to do so. All of this was said with sincerity. The support the member countries gave to Insulza's stewardship lent a rosy hue to the Organization's horizons because, above and beyond the praise due to good leadership, the winner in Santo Domingo was the OAS.

This was your first General Assembly. What do you have to say about the experience?

We had a very busy and very interesting Assembly, which is something that doesn't always happen at international meetings. There were...