The IX Summit of the Americas It will be from June 6 to 10 in Los Angeles, a senior US government official reported Thursday. Joe Biden, specifying that the guest list will be announced in the coming months.
“It will be the first time that the United States hosts the summit since the inaugural meeting in Miami in 1994. And it is an incredible opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved in the last 20 years,” he said during a press conference call.
The Summit of the Americas is the “only” hemispheric meeting of leaders of the countries of North, South and Central America and the Caribbean, highlighted the White House on Tuesday when announcing Los Angeles as the venue for the meeting.
This Thursday, the senior Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the guest list is not defined and that the United States plans to consult the countries of the region to decide it.
“The operating assumption is that we expect to receive the democratically elected leaders of the Organization of American States (OAS) at the summit,” he said.
The OAS is made up of the 35 countries of the hemisphere, although Cuba is not an active member and Venezuela is represented by a delegate from the opposition Juan Guaido, recognized as interim president by fifty countries that are unaware of the legitimacy of Nicholas Maduro.
In December, eight American countries were not invited to the Summit for Democracy organized by Biden in virtual format:
- Bolivia
- Cuba
- The Savior
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Honduras
- Nicaragua
- Venezuela
Asked about the possible participation of Guatemala and El Salvador in the Summit of the Americas in June, after Washington’s accusations of corruption in both countries, the senior US official specified that “there is no doubt” that the presidents of those two countries will be invited .
“If we only invite people who agree with us, then we’re not really going to have a debate,” he said, assuring that Biden “doesn’t shy away from these debates.”
from the first Summit of the Americas in 1994, in which Washington promoted the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that ultimately did not materialize, the regional meeting was in Santiago, Chile (1998); Québec, Canada (2001); Mar del Plata, Argentina (2005); Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (2009); Cartagena, Colombia (2012); Panama City, Panama (2015); and Lima, Peru (2018).
