President Emmanuel Macron assured on Tuesday that all the countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), except Nicaragua, support a formula referring to the conflict in Ukraine in the final declaration of the summit with the European Union (EU) in Brussels.
“All CELAC members are aligned, except for Nicaragua,” Macron declared.
The European block insists on including in the final text a mention of the war in Ukraine, confronted with a Russian invasion since February 2022.
“To put it mildly, Nicaragua is reluctant to sign the text,” Macron said.
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Nicaragua is one of the seven countries that in February voted against a UN resolution that it approved by 141 votes in favor demanding the “immediate withdrawal” of Russian troops from Ukraine.
“There really is an alignment on the text that we proposed on Ukraine,” he reiterated.
The bogging down of the negotiations to find a consensus formula on the second and last day of the meeting highlighted the challenge of finding common ground for an agreement between the EU, a highly institutionalized bloc, and a heterogeneous forum of 33 countries such as CELAC.