The Mexican foreign secretary spoke at the ministerial meeting prior to the Los Angeles meeting called by the president of the United States, Joe Biden, with the presence of guests selected by the White House, which minimized the level of the meeting.
Ebrard insisted that there should be no exclusions in this summit that belongs to the Americas, as its own logo recognizes, and there in it are Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, absent from this meeting, which, he repeated, we consider it to be a serious mistake because no one has the right to exclude another.
We do not accept the principle of intervention to unilaterally define who comes and who does not come to these events, he stressed.
He estimated that we are at the same discussion point as 10 years ago, in 2012 in Cartagena. There the conclusion was reached that it should be settled in the declaration that all the countries were invited; at that time the one excluded was Cuba, today there are two other countries besides the island.
He demanded to establish firstly, that it is a strategic error. Second, to draw attention to the fact that it is incredible that at this point we continue to see blockades, embargoes, and sanctions even during the pandemic, contradicting international law and the objectives that encourage us in the Americas.
From our point of view, he expressed, everything advises to change, to enter a new era in the relations of the countries of the Americas, to seek a true and genuine union for the benefit of all due to the new geopolitical reality that we are living with Europe, with the new economic competition, and the emergence of new regional trends.
To this end, he highlighted the evidence that the Organization of American States (OAS) and its way of acting are exhausted in the face of this reality. Just look at the shameful role it played in the recent coup in Bolivia.
Consequently, he pointed out, the proposal that Mexico makes and submits to you is that we form a working group to present the project for refounding the inter-American order, because if we have been discussing the same thing for 10 years, it is because we have not resolved it and everything urges us to solve it.
We unanimously approved declarations yes, but what is the route we are going to follow? What we see is dissent, not a common path, he criticized. What could be the principles that will animate a refoundation of our inter-American order or of the new relationship in the Americas?, he asked himself.
Why don’t we rethink on the basis of two principles that I already stated? The one of non-intervention, and the one of mutual benefit, he answered himself.
What if we take, we recover, the policy between the Americas on the basis of non-intervention and mutual benefit?, he insisted. That is what Mexico wants to put to your consideration at this Summit, he concluded.
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