Cuba describes meeting of CELAC coordinators as fruitful

Tegucigalpa, Feb 8 (Prensa Latina) Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Anayansi Rodriguez described the meeting of national coordinators of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which concluded in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Friday, as fruitful.

February 8, 2025
07:54

In statements to Prensa Latina, the deputy foreign minister said that in their eleventh meeting, the coordinators began to outline the preparations for the 9th Summit of CELAC Heads of State, to be held in Honduras this year.

During the two-day meeting, the regional integration and coordination mechanism agreed to create a permanent working group to harmonize cooperation and political coordination efforts with its extra-regional partners, the Cuban diplomat pointed out.

Among them, she mentioned the European Union, the African Union, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, China, Turkey and India.

In this regard, Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Torres was pleased that the Central American nation, in its capacity as pro tempore president of CELAC, will establish six meetings with key extra-regional partners in one year.

Rodríguez stated that at the meeting in San Pedro Sula, the first draft of the declaration for the summit of presidents was analyzed, but she clarified that the coordinators’ work has not yet concluded and that it will then be the foreign ministers who will adopt the document.

She added that this first draft addresses the issue of unilateral coercive measures, with emphasis on lifting the long-standing US blockade against Cuba and the island’s exclusion from the unilateral list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.

The draft declaration also ratifies the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, 11 years after the signing of that document by the CELAC leaders at the 2nd Summit in Havana, Rodriguez noted.

Then, all 33 CELAC member countries also determined to fully respect the inalienable right of every State to choose its political, economic, social and cultural system, as an essential condition to ensure peaceful coexistence among nations.

The draft examined in San Pedro Sula also refers to climate change and human mobility, in a complex regional and global scenario, the Cuban deputy foreign minister pointed out.

At the end of the coordinators’ meeting, Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Minister Torres announced, in a message on X, that “in 2025 we will have a Meeting of Ministers with China and a Summit of Presidents with Europe.

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