MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mexico would like to see OAS dissolved, FM says

“What we see is dissent, not a common path,” Ebrard stressed.

In the absence of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), one of the regional leaders who chose not to attend the IX Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles for having excluded Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from the event, Mexico's Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard took the stand on behalf of his country.

 Consistent with Argentine President Alberto Fernández's call to reshape the Organization of American States (OAS), Ebrard proposed to “re-found the inter-American order” by dissolving the OAS.

The Mexican diplomat also criticized the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from the meeting and the economic blockades, embargoes, and sanctions imposed in the region.

The Foreign Minister stressed that it was “a serious mistake, a strategic mistake” to exclude some countries from the summit, because in fact “no one has the right to exclude another.”

“We do not accept the principle of intervention, that of arbitrarily defining who comes and who does not come,” he said.

Ebrard also stressed it was “unbelievable” that “we must still witness the imposition of economic blockades, embargoes, and sanctions, even because of the pandemic, in contradiction with international law and the objectives that animate us in the Americas.”

“From our point of view, due to the new geopolitical reality we are experiencing with the war in Europe, the new economic competition we are experiencing where there is going to be the emergence of new regional trends,” it is necessary to reform the inter-American order, he added.

To this end, Ebrard proposed “the creation of a working group to present a project to re-found the inter-American order”, because “it is evident that the Organization of American States and its way of acting are exhausted in the face of that reality, and if not, just look at the shameful role it played in the recent coup d'état in Bolivia.”

“What we see is dissent, not a common path. What could be the principles that would animate a re-foundation of our American order or the new relationship in the Americas?” Ebrard insisted.

“Why don't we see or rethink the principle of non-intervention and mutual benefit?” he went on.