United States President Joe Biden will host the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California. on Wednesday, June 8, the White House reported this Friday.
(Read: The counterweight that the Summit of Alba wants to do to that of the Americas)
In an advance statement to Efe, The US government indicated that the president and his wife, Jill, will travel to Los Angeles on Wednesdaythe third day of the summit, which is scheduled to take place from June 6 to 10.
(You are interested in: The US evaluates how to include Cuba and Venezuela in the Summit of the Americas)
Biden and his wife will host this meeting which, according to the statement, seeks to “unite” the governments of the region when it comes to facing “pressing challenges”, among which he cites the management of the migration crisis, the fight against climate change, economic prosperity and managing the pandemic.
US Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, will also be in Los Angeles for the summit and side events. The White House did not elaborate on the trip or how long Biden will spend at the summit.
The announcement comes when the final list of leaders who will attend the meeting is not yet known, although the US government, host of the summit, It has already decided not to invite either Venezuela or Nicaragua and remains unknown about Cuba.
The coordinator of the Summit of the Americas, Kevin O’Reilly, ratified Thursday in the Senate that none of these three countries has been invited at the moment, although he was blunt that neither Venezuela nor Nicaragua will be.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has already said that “in no case” will he attend the summit even if Cuba is invited.
The countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba) are holding a meeting this Friday in Havana in which, according to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, they will establish a position on the Summit of the Americas.
Although Washington has already confirmed that it will not invite Venezuela or Nicaragua, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said this Friday that he awaits a formal response from the United States to his request to invite all countries to the summit.
“We are going to wait for them to formally respond to us and from there we are going to make a decision, it is not about confronting us, President (Joe) Biden is a respectful people,” he declared in his morning conference, which was held in Sinaloa, in the northwest of the country.
They ask to reconsider the participation of Venezuela
For their part, legislators from the United States asked President Joe Biden to reconsider the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles next month, warning that this could be detrimental to US interests in the region.
In a letter dated May 26, fifteen members of the Lower House of Congress, all from the Democratic Party like Biden, indicated their “concern that the omission of the governments of these three countries from the regional meeting, scheduled for May 6 to 10 June, “could undermine the position of the United States in the region”.
We firmly believe that the exclusion of countries could jeopardize future relations throughout the region.
“It may put at risk some of the ambitious policy proposals that his administration launched,” they wrote, referring to the “Build Back Better World” initiative with which Biden aims to counter China’s influence in Latin America.
The congressmen, headed by Gregory Meeks, president of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Jim McGovern, Chairman of the Rules Committee; and Barbara Lee, chair of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Status and Foreign Operations; they emphasized that “a policy of involvement will produce more fruitful results than a continued policy of isolation.”
“An invitation to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to participate in this year’s Summit is not an endorsement of the visions or ideologies of those countries,” they pointed out. “It is an invitation to involvement at the regional level.”
“We hope that you will reconsider the omission of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from this year’s Summit of the Americas.“, they finally said, indicating that they awaited a response. The United States is hosting the Summit of the Americas for the first time since the inaugural meeting in Miami in 1994.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE and AFP
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