The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) supported March 5 the right of Venezuela to participate in the 8th Summit of the Americas, scheduled to take place in April in Lima, Peru.
The final declaration of the 15th ALBA-TCP Summit rejected the exclusion of this South American nation and its President Nicolás Maduro from the high-level meeting to be held in the Peruvian capital, reported PL.
The Secretary General of the integration bloc, David Choquehuanca, expressed during the reading of the conclusive text that ALBA-TCP intends to “apply diplomatic and political measures” to guarantee the participation of Venezuela in said event.
The organization expressed its disagreement “with the pronouncement by a group of countries of the continent, issued on February 13, 2018, in Lima, Peru, which constitutes interference in the internal affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
“We urge the international community to abstain from exercising coercion of any type against the political independence and territorial integrity of Venezuela, as a practice incompatible with International Law and the Charter of the United Nations, and contrary to the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace,” the text continued.
The declaration also denounces Washington’s attempts to return to the mechanism of regional domination represented by the Monroe Doctrine, as well as military threats and calls for a coup against the legitimate government of Venezuela.
Also echoed is the international demand for the definitive lifting of the U.S. blockade imposed for more than half a century against Cuba.
ALBA-TCP member countries repudiated the advance of political and economic corruption in the region, “manifested by the growing inequality in the distribution of wealth.”
They also reiterated the commitment to “Latin American and Caribbean unity,” and defended their “commitment to genuinely Latin American and Caribbean integration processes such as CELAC, UNASUR, Petrocaribe, CARICOM and ALBA-TCP, to guarantee the sovereignty, independence, equality and self-determination of our peoples.”
(Granma)