U.S. won’t invite Cuba to Summit of the Americas
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration plans to exclude Cuba from the upcoming Summit of the Americas, a major global meeting to be held in Los Angeles in June that typically welcomes all governments in the Western Hemisphere, a senior U.S. official told The Times.
The summit, which is held every three or four years, is being convened in the United States for the first time since its 1994 inaugural session in Miami. Los Angeles was chosen as the venue earlier this year.
The administration’s refusal to invite Cuba is likely to anger several other Latin American countries as President Joe Biden and the State Department attempt to repair damaged relations in the region.
“We expect the democratic nations of our hemisphere to gather for a conversation,” Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, said in an interview referring to the summit.
Cuba, he said, is decidedly not part of that group, especially after demonstrations last July in which Cubans demanded political and economic freedoms. Many people were arrested and at least one died. In addition, Washington has opposed Russian influence in communistruled Cuba, its lack of free speech and its human rights record.
Numerous advocates who support improved relations with Cuba — including some in Congress — had hoped the Biden administration would reopen diplomatic, political and trade ties with the island that were frozen by former President Trump. Trump reversed an initial and historic opening initiated by then-President Obama, who sought to end a halfcentury of Cold War hostilities. However, President Biden has done little to roll back Trump’s rebukes of Cuba, which included adding the country to a U.S. government list of state sponsors of terrorism. And the administration is only slowly reestablishing U.S. consular services in Havana that would help Cubans obtain visas for legal travel.
In addition, a U.S. policy on remittances, money that people, including Cuban Americans, can send to island residents, remains “under review,” strangling a lifeline for many. Flights by American carriers, trips by U.S. tourists and cultural exchanges also remain problematic without clearer guidelines from the administration.
Meanwhile, a tough economic embargo on the island that dates to the Eisenhower administration remains in place.
The hard line on Cuba appears to have carried over to the Summit of the Americas.
For many summits after the inaugural session, all held in Latin America or the Caribbean, Cuba has not been invited or has declined an invitation. More recently, however, its government began to participate, invited despite it engaging in practices that other members of the region’s diplomatic bodies, such as the Organization of American States, have harshly condemned.
The U.S. decision, which has not been formally announced and will ultimately be made by Biden, is already attracting criticism in the region.
In addition to Cuba voicing opposition to the move, officials in Mexico, a key U.S. ally, indicated they were not pleased. In a phone call last Friday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged Biden to invite to the summit all the countries of the Western Hemisphere, “without excluding anyone.”
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard held closed-door meetings with his U.S. counterpart, Antony J. Blinken, on Tuesday in Washington. Ebrard said later at a news conference at the Mexican Embassy that he asked Blinken to reconsider denying invitations to Cuba, as well as to Nicaragua and Venezuela, which are also expected to be excluded. Ebrard said he came away without a definitive answer.