Petro announces he will not attend the Summit of the Americas in the Dominican Republic

Bogotá.- Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced this Wednesday that he will not attend the next Summit of the Americas in December in the Dominican Republic, following the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela and the latest attack by the United States against a supposed drug boat in the Caribbean. "I will not attend the Summit of the Americas in the Dominican Republic. Dialogue does not begin with exclusions," Petro wrote in an extensive post on his X account.

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On September 30th, the Dominican Chancellery reported on the decision of the Government of Luis Abinader not to invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the X Summit of the Americas, which will be held on December 4th and 5th in Punta Cana, in the east of the Caribbean country. In addition to alluding to those exclusions without directly mentioning the three countries, Petro said that he proposed to the United States a meeting with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), an organization whose pro tempore presidency is held by Colombia, "to study the economic integration of a great America". However, he added, "there was no response and what we have is an aggression in the Caribbean that had been constituted as a zone of peace." The U.S. President, Donald Trump, reported yesterday that his country's Army carried out a new attack against a ship in the Caribbean, near the coasts of Venezuela, and confirmed the death of six "narco-terrorists". Petro added that at the next CELAC and European Union (EU) Summit, which will be held in November in the Colombian city of Santa Marta, "a strong alliance based on knowledge, clean energy, artificial intelligence with global public sovereignty of its regulation will be proposed." He also indicated that "an agreement on the same terms was reached at the already advanced CELAC-China meeting" and that his Government also proposed a meeting of the regional body with the African Union and the Middle East. "I believe that Latin America's path is the most open and profound relationships with the world (sic). Latin America does not need to take sides in commercial competitions of powerful nations that are always fluctuating," concluded the Colombian president.

Sheinbaum is not going either

Petro's announcement of not attending the summit in the Dominican Republic comes two days after the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, communicated her decision not to participate, after expressing her disagreement with the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. When announcing its decision not to invite these countries, the Dominican Foreign Ministry recalled that, upon assuming the pro tempore presidency in 2023, the Executive announced that the summit would be inclusive, but "in the face of the current context of political polarization, we have decided to prioritize the success of the meeting, extending the invitation to the largest possible number of countries." The decision not to invite them on this occasion "responds to a strictly multilateral criterion," stated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which emphasized that the Dominican Republic's bilateral relationship with each of these states "maintains its own characteristics." The IX Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles (USA) in 2022, was also marked by the non-invitation to Havana, Managua and Caracas, but that year the then Colombian president, Iván Duque (2018-2022), did attend.