White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that President Joe Biden did not want ‘dictators’ at this week’s Summit of the Americas, which was why the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were not asked to attend.
On Monday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed he wouldn’t travel to Los Angeles this week for the summit after threatening for weeks to boycott the affair over the White House’s planned snub.
‘The president’s principled position is that we do not believe dictators should be invited,’ Jean-Pierre said at Monday’s briefing. “Which is the reason that the president has decided not to attend,” she added, referring to López Obrador’s position.
Jean-Pierre added that Biden was not blindsided by López Obrador’s announcement, made at a press conference earlier Monday.
‘Well, let me just first say the president was aware, speaking to Obrador, that he wasn’t going to attend,’ she said. ‘He was aware before the press conference… so there was communcation there and he was made aware.’
NBC News reported that Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will attend the conference in López Obrador’s place.
Jean-Pierre said Biden would host López Obrador and Mexico’s first lady Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller at the White House in July for a bilateral meeting.
A full list of heads of state attending the Summit of the Americas still wasn’t released by the time of the mid-afternoon briefing.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro announced Saturday that she wouldn’t be coming to the conference, sending Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina instead.
El Salvador was also not expected.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that President Joe Biden did not want ‘dictators’ at this week’s Summit of the Americas, which was why the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were not asked to attend
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed he will not travel to Los Angeles this week to attend the Summit of the Americas after President Joe Biden refused to invite the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela
President Joe Biden (right) arrives back at the White House Sunday morning from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Biden will travel to Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas on Wednesday
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro (left) and Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz Canel (right) were not invited to this week’s Summit of the Americas being hosted by the United States and held in Los Angeles
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega also was not invited to attend this week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles
López Obrador argued, ‘There cannot be a summit if all countries are not invited.’
Biden is’ not respecting these countries’ sovereignty, their independence, ‘the Mexican leader, known as AMLO, said.
At Monday’s press conference, Jean-Pierre said Mexico remained a ‘friend and a close ally’ despite López Obrador’s boycott potentially derailing this week’s conference.
Jean-Pierre had repeatedly declined to provide reporters with a final guest list in the run-up to the conference’s start.
‘I don’t have anything to share or anything to confirm about anyone’s attendance. We do not have a final list. Once we have a final list, we’ll be sharing that, ‘she said Tuesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris is already on the ground in Los Angeles and will begin attending summit events Monday, while President Joe Biden will arrive Wednesday.
The US is hosting the conference for the first time since its 1994 founding, when President Bill Clinton kicked it off in Miami.
The spectre of Obrador’s high-profile defection has loomed large over the event.
Biden and Harris worked the phone in recent days and spoke to the leaders of Argentina and Honduras, the Associated Press reported.
A sign for this week’s Summit of the Americas conference is seen in downtown Los Angeles, where the event will be held
Former Sen. Chris Dodd, a top Biden ally who’s special adviser for the summit, convinced the right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who still hasn’t spoken to Biden after more than a year in office, to attend, the AP said.
Bolsonaro was a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump.
The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are not members of the DC-based Organization of the American States, which organizes the summit.
‘This should’ve been a talking point from the beginning,’ former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon told the AP. ‘It’s not a US imposition. It was consensual. If leaders want to change that, then we should have a conversation first. ‘