FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Ibero-American and Caribbean Countries Coordinate on the Belt and Road Initiative
June 20, 2018 (EIRNS)—As reported by the Mexican news agency Notimex today, nations of the Caribbean and of South and Central America are clearly coordinating to take full advantage of their participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). At a meeting at the Ecuadorean Embassy in Beijing, representatives of Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico signed a document expressing their desire to fully understand all aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative and to ensure that the different interests they represent will be taken into account as their participation deepens.
This group intends to undertake as a first project a study on the nations involved, carried out by the China-Veracruz Studies Center (Mexico), the National University of Costa Rica, the Guayaquil (Ecuador) Catholic University, and the University of Changzhou. Additional support comes from China’s Public Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange Center, and the Embassies of Ecuador, Cuba, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic, as well as the Mexico-China Chamber of Commerce, the Ecuador-China Chamber of Commerce, and the Dominican-China Chamber of Commerce.
Notimex also reports comments by Ecuador’s ambassador in China, Carlos Larrea, who emphasized that the document represents
“cooperation in a new scenario (of the Belt and Road), which should be known, evaluated, and processed academically in a constructive manner [made available to] the institutional political sectors of each country involved.”
By understanding the Belt and Road Initiative in depth, he said, the participating countries can take maximum advantage of it in many different areas.
