Gonsalves urges regional leaders to boycott Summit of the Americas
ST VINCENT and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves is urging Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders“not to attend” next month’s Summit of the Americas to be held in the United States.
“I realise it is a difficult decision, but our American friends have left us with no other credible, principled, and practical choice. We may yet persuade them to alter their posture,” Gonsalves wrote in a letter to all the CARICOM leaders and copied to the CARICOM Secretary General Dr Carla Barnett.
Caribbean leaders are still undecided as to whether or not they will boycott the June 6-10 summit if Washington goes ahead with its plans not to invite the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the event.
In addition, the regional leaders had also expressed their opposition to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó leading a Venezuelan delegation to the event.
CARICOM chairman and Belize Prime Minister John Briceño had confirmed that Washington is lobbying for CARICOM to change its position and not boycott the summit that the United States said is expected to focus on “Building a Sustainable, Resilient, and Equitable Future” for the hemisphere.
In his May 11 letter, a copy of which has been seen by the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC), Gonsalves, one of the longest-serving leaders in the 15-member regional integration movement, wrote he is “very aware that CARICOM governments’ good relations with the USA are of paramount importance.
“However, our relations are too close, and our selfinterests too tightly interconnected for there to be any lasting rapture, certainly not more than a temporary dissonance. Our friendship has to be grounded in elemental respect, and the truth be told, we have been profoundly disrespected and disregarded by our American friends on this matter.
“Certainly, they are pulling out all the stops to persuade us to accept their ignoble stance; it is not a genuine dialogue as to what is best for our Americas,” Gonsalves wrote in the five-page letter to the regional leaders.
He warned that CARICOM “is in danger of finding itself in an uneasy position given the public declarations of several Latin American governments of their non-attendance of the summit wither at the presidential level or at all”.
Gonsalves said he had held out hope that Cuba “may endorse CARICOM’s attendance even in its absence”, but that “is more unlikely to happen.
“The Cubans have principle and practicality on their side. We are at this sorry pass because of the decision of the US government,” Gonsalves wrote, adding “so the option of attending the Summit and protest strongly in our own language regarding the non-invitation to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua is, in my view not viable in both principle and practice”.