It was not specified whether the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, whom the United States considers authoritarian regimes, will be summoned.
The United States will evaluate the “commitment to democracy” of the leaders of the region to decide the guests to the IX Summit of the Americas that will host from June 6 to 10 in Los Angeles, indicated the government of Joe Biden.
The Undersecretary of State for the Americas, Brian Nichols, said Thursday that the White House will issue the invitations in the coming weeks, and among the aspects it will weigh “will be the commitment to democracy” of the regional leaders.
“Democracy is a key priority for us in relation to the summit and, more broadly, in the government’s foreign policy. And that will be a key factor in who is invited and who is not,” he said during a press conference call.
Nichols declined to specify whether the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, whom the United States considers authoritarian regimes, will be summoned.
Nor did he say whether the presidents of the countries of the Central American Northern Triangle, which make up El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, left out of the Summit for Democracy organized by Biden in December, will be called this time.
However, another senior official in the Biden administration said that “there is no doubt” that the presidents of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, will be summoned to Los Angeles.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the United States plans to consult the countries of the region to decide on the list of invitees.
“The operating assumption is that we expect to receive the democratically elected leaders of the Organization of American States (OAS) at the summit,” this official said in another conversation Thursday with reporters.
The OAS is made up of the 35 countries of the hemisphere, although Cuba is not an active member and Venezuela is represented by a delegate from the opposition Juan Guaidó, recognized as interim president by fifty countries that do not know the legitimacy of Nicolás Maduro.
Nichols also did not confirm whether Guaidó, invited to the Summit for Democracy, will again represent Venezuela at the June meeting.
Last month, eight American countries were not invited to the Summit for Democracy hosted by Biden in virtual format: Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
– “Maximum priority” –
Nichols stressed that the Summit of the Americas, whose inaugural meeting was promoted by the United States in 1994, is the “only” hemispheric forum that brings together the leaders of the countries of North, South and Central America and the Caribbean.
“It is President Biden’s highest priority event for the region,” he stressed.
And he emphasized that, for the United States, it does not matter where a country is on the political spectrum, as long as its leaders have been democratically elected and govern democratically “to build a better future” for its people.
“If we only invite people who agree with us, then we are not really going to have a debate,” the other senior government official said on his side, assuring that Biden “does not shy away from these debates.”
The IX Summit of the Americas, convened under the slogan “Building a Sustainable, Resilient and Equitable Future”, is committed to “making the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative a reality,” Biden said this week when announcing to Los Angeles as the venue for the meeting.
Biden promotes the B3W project to generate infrastructure in developing nations as an alternative to China’s “New Silk Road”, which the Asian giant proposed in 2013 to gain global weight in low- and middle-income countries.
“We are not asking the countries of the region to choose between the United States and China,” the senior government official clarified, however.
Asked about Beijing’s growing influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, Nichols did not name China, but praised the founding foundations of B3W.
“We believe that a transparent, sustainable investment process that has a strong private sector component will generate the kinds of high-quality jobs and infrastructure that are focused on things like climate, health, safety, digital connectivity, gender equality, gender and equality,” he said.
Since the I Summit of the Americas in 1994, in which Washington promoted the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which ultimately did not materialize, the regional meeting has been in Santiago, Chile (1998); Québec, Canada (2001); Mar del Plata, Argentina (2005); Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (2009); Cartagena, Colombia (2012); Panama City, Panama (2015); and Lima, Peru (2018).
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