Excluding nations from Americas summit exposes U.S. double standards: Mexican FM

MEXICO CITY, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Washington's exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from this week's Summit of the Americas exposes U.S. double standards on democracy, Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday.

In a column article published in Mexican daily Excelsior, Ebrard wrote that "the so-called democratic clause" -- which Washington cited as the reason for not inviting those three countries to the regional gathering in Los Angeles, California -- is invoked only when it benefits U.S. interests.

"It is not applied equally in all cases, but only in some, when it is convenient," said Ebrard, laying out the reason Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador decided to forgo the summit.

The United States has, for example, pursued rapprochement with Southeast Asian nations and "launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, in which several of its members lack regimes with the democratic standards required of Cuba or Venezuela," Ebrard said.

"The exclusion of three Latin American countries from the IX Summit of the Americas is inconsistent, if not contradictory, with the reality that prevails in other international organizations of great importance such as the G20 (Group of 20) and the United Nations (UN)," added Ebrard.

What's more, taking advantage of its role as summit host to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the gathering is "questionable from a Pan-American legality issue," said Ebrard.

The foreign minister also criticized Washington's policy of imposing sanctions against countries whose political systems it disagrees with.

"The political and economic sanctions imposed as instruments for changing political regimes have repeatedly failed and, usually, have only caused harm to the civilian population," Ebrard said.

Regarding Cuba, he said, it is "impossible" to calculate the human cost of the economic, trade and financial blockade to which the United States has subjected it for more than 60 years.

"Thousands of Cuban families have been separated for decades" and "the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has estimated losses to the Cuban economy of 130 billion U.S. dollars due to U.S. sanctions, an amount greater than its GDP (gross domestic product)," Ebrard said.

The IX Summit of the Americas could have been the ideal opportunity to relaunch the rapprochement policy between Washington and Havana, which U.S. former President Barack Obama initiated at the 2015 summit in Panama.

Such a policy, Ebrard stressed, "is the best example that we must and we can build policies on this continent that benefit our peoples, despite the deepest differences."