MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Americas summit should not address Cuba issue, argues OAS

OAS Secretary, Jose Miguel Insulza

The Secretary General of the Organization of America States, OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza said it would be a mistake if the coming Summit of the Americas puts pressure on United States to end the embargo on Cuba.

“If anybody believes that US President Barack Obama should be pushed at the summit so as to achieve that objective, he’s completely wrong”, said Insulza in a Sunday interview with Colombia’s main daily El Tiempo.

“If Cuba wants an end to the embargo, it won’t be pushing” Obama he emphasized who pointed out that the marginalization of Cuba in the OAS is not an issue to be addressed at the Americas’ summit but rather at the OAS general assembly. “The summit has no authority for that, so let’s stop cheating on ourselves”.

The Americas summit is scheduled to begin next Friday in Trinidad Tobago and several regional leaders have anticipated their interest in including the Cuba issue, both its absence from OAS and the summit.

Insulza also revealed that the US wishes to dialogue with Venezuela and Bolivia to try and overcome the differences of recent years. “But is must be a dialogue with no conditions or strings attached”.

OAS Secretary General added that the main issues at the summit would be “migration and crime” and another which is vital but could be arid for the press: “increasing resources for the Inter American Development Bank, the main multilateral credit organization of the region.

“This is decisive, we need more credit”, said Insulza who underlined that in the region there’s one big shared problem, concern over what happens with the world economic crisis and how it evolves.

“If you look at data in Latinamerica from 2002 to 2008, this has been one of the best decades in recent history. But it’s most complicated to tell somebody who has being doing the right things: ‘from now on things are bad because they won’t buy from you, because the markets you patiently opened are closing…It makes you feel uneasy’”, concluded Insulza