Ban Ki-moon to Cuba Next Week

To participate in the CELAC summit

Ban Ki-moon. Photo: wikipedia.org

HAVANA TIMES — UN Secretary General, Ban Ki–moon, will travel to Cuba next week to attend the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit, reported dpa news.

Ban was invited by the government of Raul Castro as the host country to the second summit of the CELAC to be held on January 28-29. The agenda of the UN secretary during his visit to Havana has yet to detailed but he plans to meet with the Cuban president among other activities.

CELAC was founded in 2010 by initiative of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It brings together all the countries of the Americas except the United States and Canada. The summit in Havana is expected to draw numerous heads of state and government, and other representatives of the 33 countries in the region.

The Cuban government also announced it would invite senior representatives of institutions cooperating with countries of CELAC. Last Friday, the Organization of American States (OAS) confirmed that among the guests in Cuba will be its secretary general based in Washington, Jose Miguel Insulza.

According to the OAS, it will be the first visit by a head of the hemispheric organization to the island in half a century. The OAS excluded Cuba in 1962 from the forum at the insistence of United States and has since maintained a critical stance toward Havana.

CELAC defined itself from its inception as a counterpart to the OAS. The Latin American and Caribbean bloc held its first formal summit last year in Santiago, Chile, then the country holding the rotating presidency of the bloc, now held by Cuba.

8 thoughts on “Ban Ki-moon to Cuba Next Week”

  • Right on cue those Castro boys…..

  • Round-up of “Indigents” Begins Prior to CELAC Summit

    “Given that there are only a few days left before the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) is going to be held in Havana, as is usual in these cases, they are rounding up the indigents.

    The sites where the largest concentrations of homeless people spend the night in the capital are in the areas near the waiting room of the interprovincial bus terminal, located on the Avenida del Puerto, opposite La Coubre pier (formerly the Calvary pier), and behind the segment of the wall at Egido and Leonor Pérez Streets, adjacent to the main railway terminal.

    Luis Alberto Blanco, 49, a resident of Henequén Viejo neighborhood, in the municipality of Mariel in Artemisa province, said that from the beginning of the year they had an orientation for the municipal Communist Party for the appropriate agencies for the “evacuation” of the destitute before 28 January, given that it is expected that the leaders participating in the summit area with visit the port development zone that the Government is building on the bay.

    According to testimony from the victims themselves, for the nights they are forced to board a bus known as “The Colony,” a nickname derived from the name of the property to which they are transferred, located in the municipality of Boyeros, 15 kilometers south of the capital.

    They say that is they resist the transfer, the repressors turn off the lights in the bus and beat them.”

    http://translatingcuba.com/collection-of-indigents-begins-prior-to-celac-summit-pablo-pascual-mendez-pina/

  • In any other country in the world, except perhaps North Korea, Syria and a couple of others, an event like CELAC would invite the appearance of counter-protest groups who would take advantage of the visibility of the world press in attendance to get their messages known. So it should come as no surprise that a Latin American organization based in Argentina known as Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de América Latina (CADAL) in conjunction with well-known Cuban dissidents have scheduled a conference named the II Foro Democrático en Relaciones Internacionales y Derechos Humanos, to take place at the same time as the CELAC conference. It will be interesting to see how the totalitarian Castro regime responds to this protest event.

  • Yoani tweeted:

    Yoani Sanchez @yoanifromcubaFollow

    #Cuba Political police started visiting activists and oposition to advise them they should be “very quiet” during #CELAC Summit

  • I read this morning that Iran has been de-invited to the Syrian peace talks.

  • Ban Ki-moon coming to the party? … now there’s a troublemaker! … inviting Iran to Syria talks. But he would still not be the foxy red dress in the room. I would look for Cuba & US interaction … AG/RES 2438 versus the 1962 “thing” might tempt the home team to a fastball in the ear.

  • More likely, the dissidents involved in organizing the forum will be rounded up days before and held in undisclosed detentions until after the CELAC Summit is over. This was the tactic used by the regime during the last visit of Pope Benedict to Cuba. Will Ban Ki-moon be able to speak from Cuba? If so, will he comment on the situation in Syria where he has clearly accused the Castros’ BFF al-Assad of War Crimes? My guess is that he plays nice and opts to respect the hospitality of his hosts and limits his comments to eliminating third world hunger and ensuring clean water and so on.

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