Cuba President Opens 16th ALBA-TCP Summit in Havana

Prior to the opening, the Cuban head of State received the participants of the meeting, at the venue of the Protocol Hall Cubanacan of Havana

Cuban President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, inaugurated today the 16th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America-Trade Treaty of the Peoples (ALBA-TCP).

Prior to the opening, the Cuban head of State received the participants of the meeting, at the venue of the Protocol Hall Cubanacan of Havana.

Attending the meeting are the Secretary General of the integration bloc, Bolivian David Choquehuanca, presidents of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, of Bolivia, Evo Morales and Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, as well as Prime Ministers of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, and of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves.

Also, the Foreign Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Chet Greene; the ambassador of Haiti in Venezuela, Lesley David, head of his country’s delegation as guest, as well as representatives of other nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.

On occasion of the great event, the binational summit Cuba-Venezuela was held and during the afternoon, the central ceremony in commemoration of the 14th anniversary of the foundation of ALBA-TCP, initiative of the historic leaders of Cuba, Fidel Castro and Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, will take place.

The 16th summit of the Bolivarian Alliance occurs in the context of increasing aggressiveness of the United States and its allies of the right against the progressive governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, mainly.

Before the referred circumstance, several dignitaries, among them Cuba’s Miguel Diaz-Canel and Venezuelan, Nicolas Maduro, have highlighted in social networks the importance of consolidating unity and the regional integration to defend independence and sovereignty of the peoples.

To comply with that objective, they also highlighted the pertinence of strengthening the ALBA-TCP, which appeared as the alternative to the Area of Free Trade of the Americas (AFTA), a neoliberal proposal of the United States that pretended to break the sovereignty of Latin American and Caribbean nations.

With the present membership of 10 countries, the regional bloc keeps the solidarity, complementarity, justice and cooperation as main principles of its actions and the relations between the member States.