U.S. State Department official Kevin O’Reilly, coordinator of the Summit of the Americas scheduled to begin on June 6, said on Thursday that a final decision has been made to exclude Venezuela and Nicaragua. The Biden administration is still struggling to decide whether Cuba will be invited.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on Thursday he will not attend even if invited. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been threatening to lead a boycott that could cause the summit to collapse if all Latin American nations are not invited.
O’Reilly told the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Thursday that no representative of dictator Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela would be invited to the summit, because “we don’t recognize them as a sovereign government.”
O’Reilly added that inviting Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó, installed to replace Maduro in 2019 as per the rules written in the country’s constitution, was possible but would be a “White House call.” Guaidó, despite having legal authority, exercises no meaningful power within Venezuela and has failed to weaken the Maduro regime in any way since becoming president, frustrating the dozens of nations recognizing him as the rightful leader of the country.
O’Reilly repeated the line about the White House making the “call,” and refusing to say whether it has been made, numerous times under questioning from a frustrated Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).
“Why is it so hard to answer these things? These are pretty straightforward questions. I’m not trying to trick you,” Rubio said.
O’Reilly told Rubio that invitations have been extended to “representatives of civil society in Cuba” who have protested against the regime.
“We want to have as broad a participation from civil society [as possible] from every country where authoritarians or dictators are seeking to snuff out public debate,” O’Reilly said.
As for Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega, who like Maduro retained power with a rigged election last year, O’Reilly tersely said he was not invited.
Ortega said last week he was “not interested in going” because the summit is a “dirty” event at which the “king” of America “decides who he invites, and who he does not invite, to his conspiracies.”
Mexican President López Obrador on Thursday said he has received an invitation to the summit and would make his decision on attending soon, possibly as early as Friday.
On Friday, López Obrador punted by saying he was still waiting for the Biden administration to inform his government whether all Latin American countries were invited. This would suggest López Obrador might not boycott the summit over countries that said they would not attend, even if invited, although he was not clear on his precise criteria.
“Is it going to be the Summit of the Americas or is it going to be the Summit of the friends of America?” he asked at a Friday morning press conference.
López Obrador described U.S. President Joe Biden is a “good person” who might be “blackmailed” by “groups of vested interests” into excluding some countries from the summit.
If López Obrador decides to decline the invitation, he could trigger a boycott by over a dozen Latin American and Caribbean countries. O’Reilly declined to answer when Rubio asked if the Mexican president’s boycott threat was influencing White House decisions on who to invite to the summit.
“I don’t think the United States of America should, frankly, be bullied or pressured into who to invite to a summit we’re hosting. If [Obrador] doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t come,” Rubio said.
“If we have a summit where we don’t invite dictators, and the people who wanted dictators to come decide to boycott it, then we’ll just know who our real friends are in the region and govern ourselves accordingly,” he said.
Guatemala said last week that its President Alejandro Giammattei would skip the Summit of the Americas because the U.S. criticized him for reappointing Maria Consuelo Porras as attorney general. The U.S. accused Porras of “involvement in significant corruption” and said it would not allow her to enter the country.
Guatemalan Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro seemed to soften that stance on Thursday, saying Giammattei might still attend, and a Guatemalan delegation would be sent to Los Angeles for the summit if he does not.
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