Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa on Attack on Mexican Embassy: “I'll invite López Obrador to talk over ceviche or tacos”

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has vowed he has no regrets for ordering the raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest Rafael Correa, the vice president of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's government. He had sheltered him hours before the police forcefully entered the compound. “I don't regret anything,” Noboa said in an interview with Australian channel SBS last week and aired this Monday, adding that he would like to invite him “to be able to eat ceviche or some delicious food and talk.” It was the head of state's first contact with journalists since the beginning of the crisis with Mexico. “I think we're on the right side of history,” the president said, adding that the Organization of American States, which can discuss the issue, “also condemned some governments using their embassies as a front. For a political refugee, but really it's for impunity.”

The interview was conducted five days after the young president ordered elite police officers to force their way into the diplomatic palace to arrest Jorge Glass, during a trip to the Amazonian town of Puyo for meetings with indigenous communities. It unleashed an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between Ecuador and Mexico and the condemnation of the United States by 29 countries, except El Salvador, which did not vote before the OAS Council. “We have to act and make a decision,” Noboa said, because “we know a plan to escape.”

The Ecuadorian government argued that the decision to force entry into the embassy meant that Glass had two final sentences that required him to serve eight years in prison, of which he served only five. “George Claus had a conviction, a fair trial. He was convicted and sentenced to prison. “That's what our justice decided,” the president replied. “I don't regret anything,” he insisted. When asked if he had acted against what had been established at the Vienna Convention, it should be reformed. , Noboa replied that not only that convention, but also the Caracas convention on political asylum. “Because, in that case, we are engaging the sovereignty of a country and the justice system of different countries,” the president said. He had to make the decision to act, even though some of his advisers did not agree that this was a violation of the Mexican government.

Mexico received a strong condemnation of Ecuador from the OAS with a large majority and the almost complete support of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (SELAC). Backed by the European Union, the United States and Canada, he took the matter to the International Court of Justice and demanded that the South American country be suspended from the United Nations and, if proven guilty, expelled. Violation of the Charter of the United Nations. But President Daniel Noboa has his own way of solving the crisis: “I invite President Obrador to eat ceviche or some delicious food together and talk. When he is ready,” he said.

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