Peña Nieto Harshly Criticized for Comment on Mexican UN Peacekeepers

Edited by Ivan Martínez
2015-09-29 12:18:42

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Mexico City, September 29 (teleSUR-RHC)-- Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has “strongly” called attention in Mexico after announcing at the U.N.'s 70th General Assembly that Mexico would train military troops to participate in United Nations peacekeeping missions around the globe because it goes against the country's age-old policy of no intervention and responds to United States’ meddling in other countries’ internal affairs.

“His announcement is without having first consulted Congress or at least the Senate,” said Victor Flores Olea, a political analyst and columnist for La Jornada.

“It is more than probable the president is again mistaken given that the most recognized international affairs experts in Mexico and founders of the country's foreign policy established as a criteria that has been assumed for various decades that it is not convenient due to its potentially negative character for Mexico to participate in U.N.'s peacekeeping missions,” Flores added.

He emphasized that it is precisely because the peacekeeping missions' are decided unilaterally by the United States and because they are mainly seen as interventionists.

Mexico, said Flores, has also systematically avoided participating in those U.S.-led missions because they “have in the past almost taken Mexico into confrontation with other countries with which Mexico had no problems.”

The political expert also said the international behavior of the United States goes between the search for other countries to back its interventions as to “cover itself” politically or when the cost are too high.

Peña Nieto on Monday told the General Assembly that Mexico will for the first time have a training center to form Mexican international peace keepers.

He said that plan had been designed by Mexico's armed forces in coordination with the United Nations, and that by 2018 the training camp will be up and ready.

The president also announced that toward the end of this year, the Mexican army would participate in a U.N. mission in Western Sahara's referendum, in Haiti's U.N. stabilization mission and in Lebanon.


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