2023-09-12 20:25:00
Photo: Daniel Dabove.
The Cuban ambassador to Argentina, Pedro Pablo Prada Quintero, stated in an interview with Télam that the G77+China summit that will take place this week in Havana represents “an important step in the progress towards the goal of a multipolar world” that opens passage to a new order, since “the current one does not guarantee economic security, food security, peace between nationals, development, social justice or equality between human beings.”
The appointment, which will take place on September 15 and 16 in Havanawill have as its central axis cooperation between the Global South on issues of science, technology and innovationwhich in concrete terms implies joining efforts against climate change, recovery after the pandemic, debt restructuring and financing for development, with a critical look and denunciation of the action of the most developed nations.
“We are deeply convinced that there is no force in the world that can separate Cuba and Argentina”
The presidents of Argentina, Alberto Fernandezand from Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvaas well as the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterresare some of the leaders who plan to go to the Cuban capital, as well as other delegations from the 134 countries that are part of the forum and which together represent 80% of the world’s population.
– How is Cuba preparing and what expectations does it have with the organization of this summit?
– For Cuba it has been a great honor to have been elected by unanimous acclamation of the southern countries as pro tempore president of the G77+China. It is considered the main negotiating group within the United Nations and is to the world economy what the Non-Aligned Movement is to politics. That is to say, they are the great intermediaries in economic matters for the southern countries. For the first time this event is held in Cuba, which has leadership and responsibility in global negotiations.
-Among these negotiations, which are expected to be revived at the G77 summit, are achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 and the fight against climate change?
– The SDGs are one of the most important negotiations that have taken place in the history of the United Nations. Unfortunately, these objectives are not going to be achieved because developed countries have put up many obstacles. Regarding climate, Cuba actively participated in the negotiations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) and in the Paris Agreements. Southern countries emit 4% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, but we suffer 69% of the victims of natural disasters. For us, climate change is a priority. Even the geographical area where Cuba is located is one of the hardest hit areas on the planet, both due to the effects caused by increasingly destructive hurricanes, and due to the rise in sea level and temperatures that will lead to their partial disappearance. and in some cases entirely, many Caribbean island States.
– This inequality was also clear during the Covid-19 pandemic, when, for example, developed countries blocked initiatives in the World Trade Organization in favor of an exemption from vaccine patents.
– We saw in the pandemic how the monopoly of the rich on vaccines and their patents prevented the doses from reaching a good part of developing countries. That is why the focus of the summit is on the challenges of development for science, technology and innovation, because in the south a lot of science, technology and innovative contributions are produced that are kidnapped by large transnational companies, by groups of economic power and financial to control them from the North against the South. The Havana summit aims to help build consensus, to build unity around these realities in the face of global challenges.
“Bilateral relations are developing in an upward manner”
Pedro Pablo Prada Quintero stated that “relations have developed in an upward manner in all areas”, when making a balance of 50 years of the reestablishment of bilateral diplomatic ties which was fulfilled this year.
“There is cooperation in the political, economic, cultural and social spheres. There is also international trade that could be greater if the conditions imposed on both countries were not so corrosive, to Argentina with the cycles of external debt and to Cuba with the permanence and tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade that reduces our assets every day,” he said in an interview with Télam before the G77 + China summit that will take place on September 15 and 16 in Havana.
Diplomatic relations were interrupted in 1962 due to pressure from the United States and were reestablished in 1973 under the Government of Héctor Cámpora.although a year later and throughout the military dictatorship, the agency in the country, its diplomats and workers were targets of attacks and disappearances within the framework of Operation Condor.
Looking to the future, the ambassador said that “there is much that can be done and there is always an extraordinary faith that over any difference the great thing that unites both countries throughout history prevails.”
“Some friends often say that we think we are the Argentines of the Caribbean and that you act like the Caribbean people of the south,” he joked about bilateral ties.
“We are deeply convinced that there is no force in the world that can separate Cuba and Argentina”he mentioned, remembering what he said to the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, during his visit to Buenos Aires in 2019.
– Isn’t it an enormous challenge to reach consensus taking into account that in the G77 there are countries with very different political systems and economic sizes?
– The G77 was founded 58 years ago to look for alternatives to a world that excluded countries. This continues to happen, but a new world order is opening up. The logic is becoming imposed that the current order no longer guarantees economic security, food security, peace among nations, development, social justice or equality among human beings. Therefore, it does not guarantee any of the objectives for which the UN was founded and the United Nations Charter was established. For this reason, the G77 acquired such prominence and the discussions in which it is intervening seek to stop the current state of things, where a powerful group of countries maintains control over the rest of humanity. Hence the need, as seen at the recent Brics summit in South Africa, to continue building that necessary unity in diversity.
– But the differences are there.
– Pretending that humanity’s problems be resolved by standardizing the political, economic, social and cultural systems of countries is a fantasy. With so much diversity that exists, it is impossible to aspire to standardize countries with different cultures, history and traditions. So, first you have to respect the singularities. Second, we must help build consensus, and one of the most important things is always to fight for peace, to promote peace among nations. If you review the state of the world, it will be said that most of the conflicts are in southern countries. Now, with a little digging, you can see that they are instigated by northern countries. And in the background of almost all conflicts there are competing transnational economic interests, power groups allied with local sectors seeking control over natural resources and altering regional balances of power.
Photo: Daniel Dabove.
– There is a growing multipolarity in geopolitics, what value then does the summit take to position the Global South in this context?
– The summit will be an important step in moving towards that goal of a multipolar world. We live in a situation that philosophers would say is revolutionary: those at the top no longer have the means to continue keeping those at the bottom under control and the conditions that have been imposed on them are so oppressive that those at the bottom can no longer take it anymore and are increasingly challenging the above. And as long as those at the top are not able to understand that, conflicts will continue to exist.
– You are a journalist by profession, will you also speak at the summit of the world information order?
– One of the great battles in which the G77 + China is immersed, which is a pending debt initiated by the Non-Aligned Movement, is the establishment of a new international information order. Of the six large communication groups in the world, five control all the information that moves on this planet and of those five, four are Americans. What informational communication democracy can we talk about then if a country has control of everything that is read, written, seen, thought on this planet?
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