Varela on the Summit: Cuba must be present

An excerpt from an interview with Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela released Monday (Sept. 8) by the Spanish news agency EFE. Translation by Progreso Weekly. Translator’s clarifications are [in brackets].

Q.: Panama will organize the next Summit of the Americas in 2015. Will Cuba attend? Do you think that that might affect other countries?

A.: America is a single continent. It includes Cuba and we must respect that. Our Foreign Minister [Isabel de Saint Malo] said so to [U.S. Secretary of State] during her visit to Washington and I shared that during my meeting with the Holy Father [Pope Francis] in the Vatican.

All countries must be present. We have to seek what unites us and put aside for a few days any political division to face challenges in coordination.

Cuba’s participation is important because it could greatly lead to a debate on political situations. For example, the [peace] negotiations for Colombia are being held in Havana.

There are other topics that are above any political difference between the governments: the internal conflict in Venezuela and the dialogue; the issue of emigration flows toward the United States, a result of the need for laborers in an economy as large as the United States’; the struggle against organized crime and, above all, the integration of America.

Many problems can be resolved in that forum and it’s easier to do it there than through media confrontations.

[To read the entire interview, in Spanish, click here.]

[Photo on top is of John Kerry, Varela and Saint Malo in Panama, July 2014, just before Varela’s inauguration as President.]