[:es]Cuba Rejects Meddling in Venezuela and its Exclusion from America Summit[:]

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Havana, Feb 16.-Cuba has condemned declarations against Venezuela issued in Lima, Peru, by a group of governments of this hemisphere and rejected attempts to exclude president Nicolas Maduro from the coming Summit of the Americas,the Foreign Ministry stresses in a statement.

‘Cuba energetically condemns the pronouncement of a group of countries of the Western Hemisphere of February 13 in Lima, that constitutes an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’, highlights a declaration of the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

The document calls at the same time to reconsider the decision of barring President Maduro from participating at the 8th Summit of the Americas to be held next April in Peru.

The declaration refers to a meeting in the Peruvian capital of the so-called Group of Lima, formed also by Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and St. Lucia, designed as an external front of the Venezuelan opposition.

That group supported the decision of the government of Peru to ostracize President Nicolas Maduro from the Summit of the Americas, scheduled for Lima next April 13 and 14, and also insisted in not recognizing beforehand the general elections summoned in Venezuela, because according to them they do not comply with what they call international standards.

‘Very few days ago, the Secretary of State of the U.S., during a tour of the region, declared the validity today of the Monroe Doctrine, the most notorious document of imperialist interventionism in our region; called for a coup d’état against the constitutional government of Venezuela and advocated to toughen sanctions against that country’, recalls the Cuban Foreign Ministry in its statement.

‘The decision taken (by the Group of Lima) is not alien to these declarations and procedures’, it adds.

‘The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations recalls, in this context, the arbitrary and aggressive Executive Order of the United States, renewed in January, 2017, that considers Venezuela an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and the foreign policy’ of the superpower, and the most recent warning of President Donald Trump of using against it ‘a possible military option if it is necessary’.

It is unusual and incredible that now it is used as pretext an alleged ‘unconstitutional rupture of the democratic order’, precisely in a country that in a few months’ time has held municipal, regional elections for a Constituent Assembly, and has just summoned for presidential elections, as it was claimed of it previously, even through foreign interference or by non-constitutional and violent methods, says the Cuba Foreign Ministry.

Cuba denounces this pronouncement and the exclusion of Venezuela from the 8th Summit of the Americas are contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Chart and the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed by the heads of State and Government of the member countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

The Ministry of Foreign Relations ratifies the invariable solidarity of Cuba with the Bolivarian Republic of Vernezuela and with the civic-military union of its people headed by constitutional president Nicolas Maduro Moros.

The words of President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Raul Castro Ruz, pronounced on July 14, 2017, when he said: ‘the aggression and coupist violence against Venezuela harm all our America and only benefit the interests of those intent on dividing us to exert their domination on our peoples, without being concerned to generate conflicts of incalculable consequences in this region, such as those we are seeing in different parts of the world. We alert today that those who pretend to overthrow using unconstitutional, violent and coupist ways the Bolivarian and Chavist Revolution, will assume a serious responsibility before History’. (Prensa Latina)

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