President of the Republic of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel stressed Wednesday, June 10, his support for President Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan civilian-military unity, the government of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and his solidarity with Caribbean countries in his speech at the virtual High-Level Conference: Post-pandemic Economy in ALBA-TCP.
Likewise, he urged to promote and strengthen multilateralism and support the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization to coordinate a collective response. “It’s the only way to win the fight against the pandemic,” he said.
The Cuban president warned that regional peace and security are threatened by the U.S. administration, which has not rejected the terrorist attack against the Cuban Embassy in Washington and has tightened unilateral coercive measures against Cuba and Venezuela in violation of the UN Charter and the postulates of the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.
About the merciless nature of the U.S. economic unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, President Díaz-Canel said that “the persecution against commercial vessels is an act of modern piracy that sets a terrible precedent in the region in relation to the norms and regulations ruling international commercial navigation.”
Díaz-Canel asserted these genocidal blockade makes Southern nations to further suffer the consequences of the pandemic crisis.
“Each vessel that has been denied access to docks, each plane that has not found a runway to land, each person infected who has been asked money for treatment, each financial speculation to gain advantage to obtain the medicines or the protection that everybody needs, each unanswered request for help, each dead person without a known grave is an expression of the selfishness and injustice of an economic model and a system whose only goal is to enrich minorities at the expense of the suffering of the majorities,” said the Cuban president.
He affirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic can only be faced with cooperation and solidarity, and he highlighted China’s example.
In this regard, Díaz-Canel highlighted that Cuba is willing to boost and widen cooperation in public health in the ALBA-TCP by offering advice to face new challenges in the epidemiological field through course and seminars, video conferences with Cuban experts on their experience fighting the pandemic and the clinical use of Cuban innovative biotechnological medicines that have proven to be effective to treat the disease. Likewise, he offered the Institute of Tropical Medicine as an advisory agency in this matter.
Regarding the theme of the High-Level Conference, the Cuban president affirmed that it is urgent to improve the institutional structure of the ALBA-TCP economic fronts to establish a short- and a mid-term agenda, design incentives and work with greater agility and flexibility on identifying joint opportunities and projects.
“The new real economy requires a more productive approach, less inclined to financial activities,” he said.
Finally, he pointed out that the priority of the ALBA-TCP governments in the current situation must be directed towards financing and developing food production, with a focus on local production guaranteeing self-sufficiency and demanding lower levels of imports.