Monday 28 January 2013

Mexico to change ambassadors in Cuba, Canada

Mexico was to recall two ambassadors sent to Cuba and Canada by the previous conservative government and replace them with appointees closer to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its foreign policy postures that included better ties with Cuba's communist regime. The Leftist former governor of the state of Michoacán Lázaro Cárdenas Batel was to become ambassador in Cuba, replacing Gabriel Jiménez Remus, while a veteran diplomatist and former deputy-foreign minister Julián Ventura Valero would replace Francisco Barrio as ambassador in Canada, La Jornada reported on 28 January. The daily observed that good ties with Cuba characterised the foreign policy of PRI governments and that these deteriorated in the presidencies of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party. Cárdenas is a member of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and son of its founder, the former Mexico City mayor Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano; his grandfather was Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, President in 1934-40. In spite of initial protests against the 2012 general-election results and allegations of fraud against the PRI, the PRD has moved closer to the new government and signed the Pact for Mexico proposed by the PRI, designed to ease legislation. La Jornada cited unnamed foreign ministry sources as describing the appointment as a "gesture of friendship" to Cuba. Media carried pictures of a meeting in Santiago de Chile on 27 January between President Enrique Peña Nieto and Cuba's Raul Castro Ruz, on the sidelines of the summit of Latin American states and the EU. Unspecified sources cited by La Jornada stated that Mr Castro congratulated President Peña at the meeting on the PRI's return to power in 2012 and observed Cuba had had better relations with Mexico when the PRI governed; the PRI and Cuba's current regime coincided from the 1960s to 2000.

No comments:

Post a Comment