CARICOM/Cuba summit to be held in Santiago

And in news on the diplomatic front, on Monday, Caribbean heads of states will converge in Santiago de Cuba for the third Cuba-CARICOM Summit. The meeting is held every three years to mark the 1972 decision by Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba opposing the US economic embargo on the island. Today, Cuban Ambassador to Belize, Manuel Rubido Diaz, told us what will be discussed at the summit.

Manuel Rubido Diaz, Cuban Ambassador to Belize
“The idea of the summit in this year is to first revise and coordinate actions of the Caribbean with the aim of responding as a region towards the challenges that we have currently, be them economical, financial, trade, or even in cooperation. It will also be an opportunity to reaffirm the links of cooperation that Cuba has with the rest of the Caribbean which will, of course, be maintained and sustained.”

“It is important that we see in this approach, in the continuing of the Cuba Caribbean summit as a way of coordination of efforts towards the necessary unit and integration that our region needs and our region is committed to achieve, but also to arrive at an integration with the rest of Latin America. The Prime Minister of Belize has accepted to head the delegation to Santiago, so Belize will be represented at the highest level, which is a way of reaffirming the strong bilateral relations that exist between our countries.”

The first summit was held in 2002 in Havana on the thirtieth anniversary of the break of isolation. Today Cuba has embassies in fourteen CARICOM countries, eleven which have diplomatic representations in Havana.