The bickering between President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and legislators opposed to the presence of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela at the Summit of the Americas continues to grow.
This Thursday, in statements to the MSNBC television network, Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez said that “President López Obrador basically tried to blackmail President Biden, by insisting that countries that are not democratic; countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua”, whose leaders he branded as “dictators and despots”, should “be invited to the summit”, which opened on Wednesday and ends this Friday in Los Angeles, California.
López Obrador did not attend the event in protest at the exclusion of the three nations mentionedand sent Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard in his place, although this Thursday he pointed out that Mexico is “under protest” at the summit.
Menendez, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told MSNBC that “the summit is an opportunity for the democracies of the hemisphere to come together and make common cause to see how to grow economies, help people more, how to deal with with the challenges of climate change, of irregular migration”.
AMLO decided to “get away and side with dictators and despots”
The Democratic legislator lamented that instead of attending the summit “and strengthening the relationship with the United States after four years of Donald Trump’s presidency,” López Obrador has decided to “get away and side with dictators and despots.”
López Obrador accused Menéndez on Thursday of using his influence to pressure the Biden administration not to invite Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba to the summit. He also said thathe Democrat has “a lot of rancor and hatred” towards the Cuban people.