A bloc of leftist-led countries Wednesday insisted that Cuba be invited to a Summit of the Americas but put off a decision on whether it will otherwise boycott the gathering, which would spark a diplomatic row with the United States and embarrass host Colombia.
“To not invite (Cuba) is to run the risk that this will be not the last Summit of the Americas but the Last Supper, because we don’t think it’s acceptable,” Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño told reporters after a meeting in Havana of the eight-nation group known as ALBA.
But the ALBA countries will not decide what they will do if Cuba is not invited to the gathering of 34 heads of state, expected to include President Barack Obama, until host Colombia replies to their request for an invitation, Patiño added.
Patiño said that the ALBA envoys also agreed to demand that the summit take up the issue of the 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, as well as Argentina’s claims to the Falklands/Malvinas Islands, which sparked a war with Great Britain in 1982.
Attending the ALBA gathering were the foreign ministers or other top officials of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador — all ruled by leftists — and the Caribbean islands of Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda.
The diplomatic drama was sparked by Ecuador President Rafael Correa on Feb. 5, when he declared at an ALBA gathering in Venezuela that the group’s members should boycott the April 14-15 summit in the Colombian city of Cartagena unless Cuba was invited.
“It is unheard of that in the 21st Century, something is called the Summit of the Americas and for certain hegemonic countries some of us are Americans and some of us are not,” declared the left-of-center Correa.
The Obama administration has insisted that Cuba cannot attend the gathering because the 34 nations attending a previous summit in Quebec had agreed that only democratic governments could participate.
The summits, an attempt at regional economic integration and coordination launched in Miami in 1994 with the strong backing of President Bill Clinton, have the same membership as the Organization of American States, the Washington-based group that brings together all 34 nations of the Western Hemisphere.
Cuba’s OAS membership was suspended 1962 and technically reinstated in 2009 – on condition that it open a dialogue on the “practices, goals and principles” of the OAS, a reference to the organization’s many clauses on democracy and human rights.
Cuba has repeatedly said it is not interested in returning to the OAS fold, complaining that it is too dominated by the U.S. But the Cuban government has now said that it does want to be at the Cartagena gathering.
“It cannot be a summit of the Americas so long as it excludes, without reason or justice, a Cuba that has declared … that it would attend … with respect,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said at the start of the closed-door meeting on Wednesday in Havana.
