Boston Group builds bridges.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle
• Position: OAS

MORE THAN thirty congressional representatives from Venezuela and the United States met recently to discuss the relationship between Congress and the media, and to examine what steps legislators in Venezuela can take to address the problem of poverty.

This was the second meeting of the "Boston Group," a U.S.-Venezuela forum created to strengthen inter-parliamentary ties. The initiative, which receives OAS support, is coordinated by U.S. representatives William Delahunt (Democrat-Massachusetts) and Cass Ballenger (Republican-North Carolina), and by Venezuelan congressmen Pedro Diaz Blum, of the opposition Proyecto Venezuela party, and Calixto Ortega, of the official Movimiento V Republica.

"The idea is to create a space for discussion outside of the country's daily politics, which allows for the exchange of ideas in an environment of tolerance and mutual respect that rises above the partisan discussions," Ortega said.

The legislators, who met on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, from June 30 to July 2, agreed on a number of issues, including the need to promote a broad dialogue in Venezuela on the draft Social Responsibility Law for Radio and Television.

Ballenger, who chairs the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives, offered to find private funds to create a television channel in the Venezuelan National Assembly, similar to C-SPAN in the United States, to broadcast debates. "You'll be surprised at how many fewer fights you'll have in Congress if you know the country is watching," he told the group.

On the issue of poverty, participants identified steps they could take in the short, medium, and long term in Venezuela, including the creation of a permanent parliamentary forum to address the problem and the definition of an antipoverty legislative agenda.

"I think we are all in agreement that there are many areas of consensus on this issue of such priority for our country," said Diaz Blum, who described the Boston Group as "a bridge between the...