ALBA Countries to Withdraw from Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance
This week, an agreement to publicly withdraw from the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance was signed by foreign affairs ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), including Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The information was released by Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño during the 42nd OAS General Assembly held in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Patiño said: “Our [ALBA] countries have made the decision to drop what is droppable, what doesn’t work anymore, like the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, which was supposedly created to defend the countries of the region before an extra-continental military threat, which never happened”.
“The only time when the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance was really important was in the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands in the 80’s, when an extra-continental power attacked a country of our continent, but it didn’t work. In fact, one of the countries of the continent supported that extra-continental power”, recalled Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca.
Meanwhile, Patiño explained that “our countries have made this decision to denounce the treaty based on its article 25. This is a decision to begin cleaning up the dead leaves of the Organization of American States (OAS) from a number of useless mechanisms”.
The ministers agreed that the OAS must be reformed so it can be at the service of the people, and not just an organism that supports the interests of a power.