Last Sunday, a few hours after landing in Quito to attend the inauguration of Guillermo Lasso as President of Ecuador, Foreign Minister Felipe Solá met with the United States Ambassador to the United Nations and head of Delegation, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere of the National Security Council, Juan Sebastián González, and the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the Department of State, Julie Chung.
The officials discussed the regional situation in the context of the pandemic, President Biden’s announcement about the donation of vaccines to Latin America, and the arrival on Monday 24 May of 843,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses from the United States, as part of the first batch under the contract signed by Argentina to receive 22.4 million doses. In addition to these doses, 204,000 AstraZeneca doses acquired by Argentina under the COVAX mechanism arrived on Sunday, totalling more than 1 million new vaccines.
Argentina has been consistently taking proactive steps within the context of US cooperation to increase the number of vaccines available in our country. For example, on 2 April, the Foreign Minister held a telephone conversation with the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, during which the Minister requested his support and assistance to enable speedy delivery of AstraZeneca vaccines to our country. This was one of the main topics Foreign Minister Solá discussed with Juan González and Julie Chung on 13 May, during the visit of both U.S. officials to Argentina.
The Foreign Minister mentioned that Argentina would actively cooperate during the regional climate change summit and thanked again for the invitation extended by the US President, Joseph Biden, to President Alberto Fernández for him to participate in the Leaders Summit on Climate, stressing its importance.
“We believe that this has been helped many countries to raise their climate ambitions. We also congratulate the United States for the commitment demonstrated by its announcements during the Summit. We regard the return of the United States to the Paris Agreement and its renewed multilateral commitment to achieve greater environmental protection as essential,” Solá stated.
The meeting was also attended by the Undersecretary of International Financial Relations for Development of the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs, Christian Asinelli, the Undersecretary for Foreign Policy of the Foreign Ministry, Gustavo Dzugala, and the U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, Michael Fitzpatrick.
