The White House said President Joe Biden knew in advance that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would not attend the Summit of the Americas after the president decided not to invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and he doesn’t regret the decision.
The move by one of America’s closest regional allies to forgo the summit is a blow to the Biden administration as it prepares to host the event for the first time since 1994. The leaders of Honduras and El Salvador, two of the three Northern Triangle countries, are also abstaining.
The Biden administration has sought to downplay the boycott, with Biden’s press secretary telling reporters that he does not regret the decision to refuse invitations to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
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“At the end of the day … we just don’t believe dictators should be invited,” Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday. “We don’t regret that, and we will stand, the president will stand, by his principles.”
She suggested that inviting “dictators” would yield little benefit for the public, despite the roles played by Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries in working alongside the United States to stem migration to the southern border.
Jean-Pierre said the president might be willing to overlook moral hazards to engage with foreign leaders under other circumstances, such as when he sees an interest for the country.
“If he determines that it’s in the interest of the United States to engage with a foreign leader and that such an engagement can deliver results, then he’ll do so,” Jean-Pierre said when asked about Biden’s decision to bridge ties with Saudi Arabia.
The president is expected to visit the kingdom, which faces allegations of human rights abuses and whose de facto leader ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an American intelligence report.
Mexico’s president, known as AMLO, has warned for weeks that he will not attend the summit unless Biden invites every leader in the region.
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Lopez Obrador said during a news conference that he would visit Biden in July instead. But he also argued that long-standing policies of “exclusion” needed to change and criticized a need for “domination,” Reuters reported.
