Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will not attend the Summit of the Americas summit after the United States excluded three other countries from the summit.
The summit, organized by the Pan-American Cooperative Organization OAS, will be held in Los Angeles this year. The White House has announced that US President Joe Biden will not invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the meeting as it is believed that the countries are not democratically governed.
“Amlo”, as Mexico’s left-leaning president is called, announces at a press conference that he is sending the country’s foreign minister to the meeting instead, because the United States has chosen not to invite all the countries that are part of the organization.
– I think it is needed. It is absolutely necessary that the attitude we have had towards us all these years, to exclude us, changes, says the president.
Guatemala’s Conservative president Alejandro Giammattei has also refrained from leaving, after the United States imposed sanctions on the country’s chief prosecutor.
“Amlo” calls the withdrawn invitation to the three countries a new example of the United States’ “lack of respect for other countries and their peoples”.
According to the White House, Biden was looking forward to meeting his Mexican counterpart.
Summit of the Americas takes place June 6-10.