Emir Olivares and Alonso Urrutia
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, May 4, 2022, p. 5
Even though a White House official asserted that the Joe Biden administration does not contemplate including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua in the ninth Summit of the Americas, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked don’t get ahead of yourself
and he trusted that the American will respond positively to his proposal so that all the nations of the hemisphere are considered at the meeting.
Yesterday morning, he trusted that Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard – who was in Washington to discuss various issues on the bilateral agenda – could influence the United States to agree to convene the countries excluded from the forum, which will be held in June in Los Angeles, Calif.
However, during a conference in which he discussed the details of his visit, Ebrard noted: they were very respectful; They did not tell us that they reject our proposal, but we know that they have a different position (from that of Mexico) until today
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We don’t have to get ahead of ourselves
In the morning, when asked about the White House’s refusal, López Obrador replied: we must not get ahead of ourselves; We made the approach to President Biden (last Friday, during the telephone conversation they had). He mentioned to me that he was going to think about it. Marcelo Ebrard went to Washington on Monday and I instructed him to discuss this, in addition to the issues on the bilateral agenda.
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But while the foreign minister traveled to the US capital, the Undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Brian Nichols, reaffirmed that they will not invite Cuba, Nicaragua – which has already expressed its lack of interest in attending – or Venezuela. Washington maintains political and ideological differences with those three countries.
It is a key moment in our hemisphere, in which we are facing many challenges to democracy, and Cuba, Nicaragua and the Maduro regime do not respect the Democratic Charter of the Americas; therefore, I do not expect your presence
, Nichols declared in an interview with the NTN24 network, of which he shared fragments on his Twitter account. However, the official noted that it is a decision by President Biden.
Despite this, López Obrador said he was confident that the White House would reconsider that position. We have to wait for us. Someone told me, I think Marcelo, that everyone was invited to the last summit (in Peru 2018).
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