Mexico leader to skip Biden's summit after US excludes Latin countries
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Mexico President asserted that "You cannot have a Summit of the Americas if you do not have all the countries of the Americas attending."
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Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
Due to Washington's failure to invite countries it views as undemocratic, Mexico leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared on Monday that he would be absent from the regional Summit of the Americas in the United States.
The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden would not be inviting Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the summit taking place this week in Los Angeles.
In his daily press conference, Obrador said he will not go to the summit adding that he thinks "it is necessary to change the policy that has been imposed on us for centuries: exclusion."
"You cannot have a Summit of the Americas if you do not have all the countries of the Americas attending," Lopez Obrador said, adding, "Or you can have it, but we see that as the old policy of interventionism, lack of respect for nations and their people."
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard would be representing Mexico instead, as per Obrador.
Cuba's President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, announced he will not be there even if invited, while Guatemala's conservative leader Alejandro Giammattei pulled out after the US sanctioned his top prosecutor.
A senior US official told AFP that "the US continues to maintain reservations regarding the lack of democratic space and the human rights situations" in the three countries, adding, "As a result, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela will not be invited to participate in this summit."
The United States and Cuba have had tense relations since the 1959 revolution that saw former President Fidel Castro overthrow the US-backed Fulgencio Batista regime, under which the population suffered from horrendous conditions.
The US has had Cuba sanctioned since the revolution took place, though Washington had ratcheted up sanctions against the country several times.
Malign US policies in the region have pushed Nicaragua to exit the Organization of American States, with the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister saying, "The People and Government of Nicaragua denounce [...] a political instrument of intervention and domination of the US State Department, wrongly and falsely called the Organization of American States."
