Ecuador will discuss next week with the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, priority issues related to trade and economic cooperation, migration, security and the fight against drug trafficking.
This is how the Ecuadorian ambassador to the US Ivonne Baki advanced this Saturday to Efe, who described the visit "of the highest level" and he congratulated that Ecuador is the first South American country to which the head of US diplomacy in the Biden Administration travels.
The Secretary of State will begin the visit on Tuesday in Quito, where he will meet with the President, Guillermo Lasso, and the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, Mauricio Montalvo, with whom he will discuss, among other issues, investment and trade, climate change and regional security, the Department of State.
Baki stressed that both countries share respect for democracy, human rights, freedoms such as freedom of expression and the separation of powers.
"The message that the US is sending is that they greatly appreciate countries that are similar and that are working in this line of fighting poverty, which is what generates crime, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. Everything negative that the region has had", said the diplomat.
The visit takes place at a time when the Andean country is experiencing an unprecedented prison crisis as reflected in the last massacre in late September in which 118 prisoners were killed in a Guayaquil jail, in a brawl attributed to criminal organizations related to drug trafficking. .
For this reason, the ambassador stressed that the issue of security and the fight against drug trafficking will be central to the meetings.
"We do not want that in our countries, which have been peaceful, we have to be suffering what happened in prisons. It is time to give it importance in Ecuador and that it does not become another Venezuela"Baki said.
Another of the priority issues of the Lasso Executive is to reach a trade agreement with Washington, and with that objective he valued the step taken by the country by joining ICSID, an institution that leads the settlement of disputes related to international investments.
He also stressed that the United States continues to be Ecuador’s first commercial partner in a region where it is no longer the main actor as it was two decades ago, and in that sense he framed the journey in the interest of the White House to continue economic cooperation and investment. .
"Ecuador is very interested in continuing to be the commercial partner and we want an agreement for that, we have already made the necessary advances that generate security for the investor and clear rules of the game"he argued.
Earlier this month, a delegation from Joe Biden’s government, headed by the Deputy National Security Advisor for the international economy, Daleep Singh, traveled to the country to explore investment projects in public works in which the United States can counteract China’s influence in the region.
This is the B3W initiative, acronym in English for "Rebuild a better world", which the US president launched in June together in the G7, a group of the main industrialized powers.
The initiative, with an unprecedented investment, "It was started in the hemisphere to show that they want to generate that infrastructure, but not only of cement, but also social, of human capital"Baki said.
The objective, he added, is to combat poverty and generate employment, considered by the Government of Ecuador to be key to avoiding insecurity and irregular migration.
The ambassador advanced that Blinken will analyze "holistic" the issue of migration with the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister and his Colombian counterpart, Marta LucÃa RamÃrez.
After Ecuador, the Secretary of State will travel to Bogotá next Thursday, where the focus will be on regional migration, and will hold a High Level Dialogue.
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