Mexican President to skip APEC summit due to Peru row
AFP | | Posted by Sreelakshmi B
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that he would skip an Asia-Pacific summit in the United States in November because of a diplomatic rift with Peru.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AFP)
Lopez Obrador said that he did not want to participate because Peru would receive the rotating presidency of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum at the San Francisco meeting.
READ | Mexico president doesn’t want Americans to vote for this candidate: ‘Those who…’
“I’m not going to attend the San Francisco (summit) because we do not have relations with Peru,” the leftist President said at his morning news conference.
Tensions between the two Latin American nations flared after Peru’s leftist then-president Pedro Castillo was ousted and arrested in December for attempting to dissolve parliament and rule by decree.
Lopez Obrador has been one of Castillo’s most fervent foreign supporters, and refused to recognize his successor Dina Boluarte, calling her an “usurper.”
In response, Peru expelled the Mexican ambassador and recalled its envoy to Mexico.
“Of course we want Pedro Castillo to be released because he has been unjustly imprisoned,” Lopez Obrador said Thursday.