Argentina, in its capacity as the country in charge of the Pro Tempore Presidency (PPT) of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)advanced this week in its strategy of making this regional mechanism a relevant actor in the international concert with an active role in achieving a peaceful solution to the war in Ukraineand to show itself as a safe provider of energy and food on the basis of “solidarity multilateralism”.
Some of these premises were present in the three-day tour that President Alberto Fernández made through the United States, where he participated in the 77th United Nations General Assembly (UN), met in New York with the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgievaand exhibited before oil businessmen in Houston, as part of an intense agenda of conferences and meetings.
Fernández took advantage of his stay in the US to deploy some of the objectives that he set for himself when he assumed command of CELAC in January of this year: “strengthen the voice” of the bloc that brings together 32 nations from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Aware of the importance of energy reserves and the volume of food production in the region in the midst of the international crisis unleashed by the armed conflict between Russia, Ukraine and the NATO countries, Argentine leadership in CELAC It seeks that the bloc has a greater incidence in the global governance system and with it greater benefits for the most unequal area of the planet.
With this horizon, CELAC in the hands of Argentina maintains a policy of “balance” between the main powers: it maintains a “positive” agenda with the United States and advances in the consolidation of its link with China (the other superpower), without neglecting its historic relationship with Europe.
The meeting that Fernández and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macronheld last Tuesday in New York in the framework of the UN assembly, ratified the importance that countries of the old continent assign to CELAC, which had already been evidenced by the participation of the Argentine president in the last G7 summit in Germany.
During the dinner promoted by Macron, held at the French Consulate in New York, Fernandez and the French president strengthened common positions seeking to alert the world to the need for a “way out” of the war in Ukraine.
The closed meeting – to which the Argentine president was specially invited along with five other presidents – had as its The objective is the gestation of an international initiative to achieve peace in Ukraine, restore the supply of goods and calm the price tension in the world.
In this sense, the alternative of a joint intervention of leaders from various regions of the world that exerts pressure for an opening of dialogue has begun to be evaluated, sources from the Argentine delegation informed Télam.
“We have been working with Macron for a long time, concerned about the effects of the consequences of the war, and we were able to continue the work that we began in Paris and continue in the G7,” Fernández reviewed in dialogue with Argentine media that covered his tour of the US, including Télam.
In the talk with the press last Wednesday, Fernández reiterated some of the concepts about the war that he had pronounced a while before in his speech before the UN General Assembly: “We are all convinced of the need for the war conflict to end as soon as possible that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the need to restore peace”he emphasized.
The war in Ukraine “far exceeds the region and what appear to be conflicting sectors,” he said, noting that in the southern hemisphere “there are enormous losses” as a result of the armed conflict and that “they have to do with hunger.” .
In fact, and as Télam learned from high-ranking government sources, a concrete proposal to intervene in the crisis emerged from the talk with Macron, although for now it is in an embryonic state.
“We are trying to open an instance of dialogue that does not exist today,” the sources indicated, and warned that, seven months after the start of the fighting between kyiv and Moscow“the only thing that is clear is that what is being done was not enough”.
This is what Macron’s obsession with adding leaders from various continents and representing regional blocs responds to, as a way to cement an extended position that can be a guarantor of some instance of negotiation, although for now it is only a working hypothesis. In the Argentine Government they not only share this idea, but also affirm that “if you keep trying with the same methods, different results cannot be expected.”
Following this premise, President Fernández bets that the voice of the southern hemisphere be taken into account in the conflict, not only because it is representative of a space that is not usually listened to, but also because it is affected by the restrictions derived from the conflict.
Macron invited leaders from different regional blocs such as the G20, the African Union and CELAC to the dinner.
As the last item on the international agenda, the Argentine president was also able to bring his proposals on hunger to a meeting organized by his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchezwithin the framework of the World Summit on Food Security that was also held in New York.
“Hunger did not start with the war in Ukraine, but has to do with a capitalist system that expels and marginalizes,” exclaimed Fernández during the lunch called by Sánchez that was held at the Intercontinental Hotel. The Prime Minister of Canada listened to him attentively. Justin Trudeau; the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz; the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardenand the presidents William Lassofrom Ecuador, and Gustavo Petrofrom Colombia, among others.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero -who was part of the Argentine delegation in New York- led last Monday in that city a working breakfast with more than 20 foreign ministers from CELAC, a meeting in which the actions developed by the bloc under the Argentine PPT were evaluated and the need for institutional strengthening of the regional mechanism was ratified.
Cafiero stressed that “main mandate” that Argentina has at the head of CELAC is to carry out actions “in line with the development of our peoples” on the basis of a “commitment to solidarity-based multilateralism.”
The latter makes CELAC seek to expand the articulation of the mechanism with extra-regional partners, including dialogue with China and India and other regional blocs such as the European Union, the African Union and Aseanindicated a statement from the Argentine Foreign Ministry when reporting on that meeting.
Precisely, the strategic relationship that Argentina has been forging with China and its spread to the rest of the region was also present in New York, with the working meeting that Cafiero held with the Asian giant’s State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, with whom he analyzed the entry of our country into the Brics -which make up Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa- and other issues on the bilateral agenda.
