President Alberto Fernández will meet next month with his American counterpart, Joe Biden, in Washington, tentatively on July 25, in what will be the first bilateral meeting between the two leaders, official sources reported.
The meeting was confirmed after a 25-minute telephone conversation between the two in the afternoon, in which they discussed the problems of food insecurity, the energy transition, the new regional value chains and technological change with social inclusion, in a context where the importance of consolidating concrete steps to guarantee global peace stands out.
In the conversation, which took place at 5:45 p.m. and lasted 25 minutes, Biden formalized an invitation for Fernández to visit Washington “during the last week of July, tentatively on the 25th”, in order to deepen the bilateral relationship in a broad agenda of strategic cooperation issues, among others: climate change, financial cooperation, renewable energies, technological innovation, human rights and agri-food production.
Nevertheless, Fernández replied: “Maybe we’ll see each other before at the Summit”, of the Americaswhich will take place on the 8th and 9th of this month and to which this afternoon the Argentine president confirmed his presence through a letter he sent to the organizers before this noon.
The dialogue contributed to highlighting the potential of the bilateral linkand to establish a roadmap that, within the framework of Latin America and the Caribbean, allows the deployment of opportunities for comprehensive, sustainable and inclusive human development, indicated a statement released by the Presidency.
In another part of the dialogue, carried out by Fernández from the Casa Rosada and accompanied by the Secretary for Strategic Affairs of the Presidency, Gustavo Beliz, the head of state highlighted to the US President a phrase by Pope Francis in which he asked that “there be no use the grain, basic food, as a weapon of war”.
Biden told him that “I couldn’t agree more,” adding: “For us, the best export product of Argentina is Pope Francis,” to which Fernández replied: “We don’t export it, for now we are lending it to to the world”.
“I perfectly understand your position, I would do the same,” the US president jokingly completed.
Fernández and Biden had briefly spoken face to face on October 30as part of the protocol greetings at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Rome.
Earlier, on April 22, 2021, the Argentine president spoke, via videoconference, at the Leaders’ Summit on Climate Change, to which he was invited by Biden a month earlier.
On September 9, Fernández gave a virtual presentation, along with global leaders, at the Forum of Major Economies on Energy and Climate, also convened by the US president.
While on December 9, the President also participated by videoconference in the Summit for Democracy, also organized by the US president in Washington.
On July 16 and August 6, before and after the shipment of 3.5 million doses of the Modern vaccine by the United States, Fernández thanked Biden in a letter for that gesture by the US government.
On April 13, 2021, it was the US President who had sent a letter to Fernández in which the head of the White House valued the commitment of the Argentine Government in the fight against the coronavirus and “its cooperation in other bilateral priorities”.
Biden assumed the Presidency on January 20, 2021 and the Argentine president greeted him through his Twitter account, while the next day, also through a letter he sent him, he wished him “the best of success” in his new management and told him that the Argentine government is “ready and hopeful” to “build a shared work agenda”.
Before he took office, on November 30, 2020, Fernández had a telephone conversation from Casa Rosada with the elected president of the United States, an occasion in which he asked for the “good will” of the representative of the North American country before the Monetary Fund International (IMF), in those times of negotiations with the multilateral credit organization.
Fernández’s first public mention of Biden was on November 7 of that year, when the Argentine head of state congratulated, through his Twitter account, “the American people for the record participation in the elections, a clear expression of the popular will”, and hailed him as the “next president of the United States”, and also Kamala Harris, who “will be the first female vice president of that country”.
