The Foreign Minister of Costa Rica, Rodolfo Solanowarned this Saturday that the conflict in Ukraine should not be extrapolated to Latin America, after the visit of the president of the Russian Duma, Viacheslav Volodin, to Cuba and Nicaragua.
Solano, who is on a working visit to the Dominican Republic, told Efe that Costa Rica defends diplomatic channels, although he stressed that this should not serve to try to “extra-regionalize” the conflict.
“As long as the conflicts in a region are not extrapolated with the interest of extra-regionalizing them, we have to continue betting on the opportunity of diplomatic dialogue,” Solano told Efe in reference to the regional tour of the president of the Duma, which concluded on Thursday in Managua.
The Costa Rican minister reiterated his country’s “vehement condemnation” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and urged President Vladimir Putin to cease hostilities immediately.
Situation in Nicaragua
Solano also referred to the situation in Nicaragua and opined that “for that country to return to the paths of democratic institutions,” two requirements must be met.
The first is “the release of political prisoners” and the second, that human rights representatives from the UN or the inter-American system be allowed to enter Nicaragua.
Compliance with these requirements would make it possible to propose the organization of “a serious and structured dialogue, not like the one in 2018,” which would include the opposition, the private sector, civil society, the academic sector and the Nicaraguan diaspora, as well as observers from the international community.
Likewise, the Costa Rican foreign minister demanded from the “regime” of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, “a commitment to move towards democracy.”
“If we don’t adequately articulate (the dialogue), what we can have is that there is a normality of the anti-democratic regime that has been consolidated there,” he added.
Solano was received on Friday by the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, and by the foreign minister of this country, Roberto Álvarez.
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