Mexico City, September 13 (RHC)-- Mexico's Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrad reported on Thursday that his country strongly rejects the decision taken by 12 countries which invoked the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) to promote armed action against Venezuela. For such a decision means a threat to any other Latin American country.
Ebrard explained that TIAR, which was signed before the creation of the OAS, has “no reason to be in the world's current conditions,” which is why Mexicó resigned from that agreement in 2002.
Fostering a military solution to the political impasse in Venezuela constitutes something which contradicts the "Non- Intervention Principle" which the Mexican nation has defended for decades.
"Yesterday Mexico held that and that will be this government's position," Minister Ebrard said with reference to the meeting that the OAS Permanent Council's meeting on Wednesday.
At this encounter, the Venezuelan opposition -- Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, the United States, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic -- supported a resolution to invoke the TIAR, which is a mutual defense treaty before armed attacks.
Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay refrained from supporting such an initiative. Bahamas was absent during the vote.
Mexico's permanent representative to the OAS, Luz Elena Baños, warned that the TIAR mechanisms represent a danger to the region. "Although my country is not a TIAR member, it is obliged to pronounce itself decisively against the political use that this delicate and controversial instrument is intended to give," the diplomat said and recalled that Mexico is in favor of strengthening continental security through a multidimensional and civil approach.
Baños also stressed that there is no armed conflict in the Americas that demands the use of self-defense, "much less among ourselves." The Mexican diplomat also pointed out that the Article 51 of the United Nations Charter speaks clearly about "the existence of an armed attack," that is, "an act of aggression."
Although a country's domestic crisis could have negative effects, "it is not an act of aggression," Baños explained and stressed that the TIAR cannot be invoked as a “preventive action”, for using it in this way opens a dangerous option that could destabilize the entire continent.
"Mexico has a duty to warn of this eminent risk, which would seriously affect our population due to the irresponsibility of using force options that could severely damage sovereignty and non-intervention."
