Mexico has refused to participate in the upcoming meeting in Saudi Arabia that Zambia and other countries have been invited to saying they cannot discuss a peace initiative involving Ukraine alone.
The upcoming meeting in Saudi Arabia is pointless unless both countries are present, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO has said.
Discussing peace in Ukraine makes sense only with the participation of both Kiev and Moscow, President Obrador, said on Monday, adding that because this is not the case with the upcoming talks in Saudi Arabia, his country will not participate.
“If both Ukraine and Russia agree to seek options to achieve peace in this conflict, we will participate, if the parties in conflict agree and convene for that purpose,” the president, known as AMLO after his initials, said at a press conference.
“We do not want the war between Russia and Ukraine to continue,” he added. “It is very irrational, people suffer a lot, people are dying, and the only benefits go to the war industry, the makers of weapons.”
High-ranking officials from around 30 countries will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on August 5-6, to discuss peace in Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal. Russia was not invited, however.
The Journal described the Jeddah event as a follow-up to a similar meeting held in June in Copenhagen, where Kiev and its Western backers attempted to persuade countries that had so far chosen to remain neutral to support Ukraine. Discussions are expected to be based on the ten-point “peace formula” proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which in practice amounts to Russia’s unconditional surrender.
Russia laughed off Zelensky’s “formula” as unrealistic and delusional. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Moscow intends to negotiate with the US, which he described as pulling Zelensky’s strings.
The United States and their allies had hoped that they would force Russia to the negotiating table having supplied Ukraine with their premier weaponry for the Ukranian counteroffensive which has yielded no significant gain two months after it was launched, with Ukraine losing over 26,000 men, according to Russian estimation, while also losing thousands of western supplied weapons while attempting to breach fortified Russian defensive lines.
Saudi Arabia and Ukraine have invited 30 countries to the new meeting in Jeddah, among them Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Chile and Zambia. How many of them will attend is unclear, although the states that participated in the Copenhagen talks are expected to do so again.
The UK, South Africa, Poland and the EU are among those who have confirmed their participation. The source said Sullivan is also expected to attend the meeting again.
Western diplomats say Saudi Arabia was selected to host the second round of talks partly in the hope of persuading China, a country with close ties to Moscow, to participate. People involved in the negotiations say Beijing does not plan to attend the meeting but has not ruled out the possibility.
The participants in the Copenhagen meeting noted a wide gap between Ukraine and most developing countries. Ukrainian officials pushed participants to support President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan, calling for all occupied territories to be given back and demanding that Russian occupying forces leave Ukraine before peace talks begin.
A group of developing countries has made it clear that they are open to discussing common principles, but will not sign up to Ukraine’s plan, the Wall Street Journal reports.
