Ecuador’s Correa Pushes for a New Organization of Latin American States

Juventud Rebelde, Dec 23, 2008

The Ecuadorian leader explained that the new group would include Cuba, and not countries “foreign” to the region.

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, on Saturday proposed the creation of a new Organization Latin American of States that would be created from the Rio Group; moreover, this would include Cuba and exclude those countries that are “foreign” to the region.

Correa, in his weekly radio and television broadcast, expressed his desire that this organization be formed in March, during the next Rio Group meeting, reported EFE.

The Rio Group is presently composed of Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guiana, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela, and other members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), represented at this time by Jamaica.

For Correa, what occurred in Brazil was a “momentous step forward” for Latin American integration and an example of “the new winds that are blowing” across the region.

“What we seek,” he explained, “is that the Rio Group “becomes the new Organization of Latin American States,” which would substitute in discussions of regional problems for the currently existing Washington-based Organization of States American (OAS), explained Correa.

The aim that “no longer we have to go to Washington to discuss with the US, which neither understands the region nor is interested in it—and which has its own objectives,” he added. The leader recalled that Cuba has kept been outside of American and regional forums due to the US blockade.

“We will see if President Obama will truly change US foreign policy” and eliminate the blockade against Cuba, which is “untenable, intolerable and unjustifiable in the 21st century,” he stated.