With the arrival of Xiomara Castro to the presidency of Honduras, the United States wants to start a new stage of bilateral relations away from tensions and marked, instead, by dialogue and collaboration on priority issues such as migration and corruption, they said on Wednesday. two important Washington officials.
“We see it as an opportunity to really start a new chapter,” a senior Joe Biden administration official said during a telephone news conference asking not to be identified, following White House policy.
Vice President Kamala Harris will lead a delegation to Castro’s inauguration on Thursday, and immediately after the ceremony the two will meet to begin work, the officials said. It will be the first meeting of the new Honduran president with a foreign official, they indicated.
Corruption is one of the most important issues on Biden’s international agenda, which he also considers to be one of the causes of migration, along with poverty and economic difficulties.
The administration has pledged more than $4 billion in its four years in office to help these countries, but Congress has yet to approve it.
Harris is the most senior official in the Biden administration who has traveled to a Latin American country. His trip to Tegucigalpa will have two fundamental objectives: to deepen bilateral relations and continue with his policy of eradicating corruption in Central American countries, an evil that the United States considers one of the causes of the migration of tens of thousands of people. towards the border with Mexico.
On December 10, Castro and Harris had a telephone conversation in which they discussed priority issues for both countries, including expanding economic opportunities, fighting corruption and how to solve the migration crisis in a humane way.
At the in-person meeting they will go deeper and start working on those issues concretely, the officials said.
“Those are the things we want to partner with her (Castro) on,” said the official, after praising the issues that the Honduran president-elect has described as priorities for her country. Among them, she recalled that she Castro said that she will ask the United Nations to help her fight corruption, that she is interested in education, health and creating job opportunities.
The outgoing president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, has faced allegations of ties to drug trafficking that have strained his relations with Washington. He has denied them. His brother, Tony Hernández, was sentenced in March 2021 to life in prison in New York for having brought tons of drugs into the United States. Prosecutors allege that the president collaborated with him, although so far there is no formal accusation against him.
Asked whether Hernandez could also face charges in US courts once he leaves office, the officials said that would be up to the Justice Department, not the White House. They declined to offer any other details.
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