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West’s push to arm Kiev falls flat in Latin America, says Mexican top diplomat

Brazil, Argentina and Colombia have already refused to supply weapons to Ukraine

LONDON, February 15. /TASS/. Latin American countries are not backing Western "pleas" to send weapons to Ukraine, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told the Financial Times on Wednesday.

"I don’t think that sending weapons to prolong the conflict has support in Latin America," the foreign minister said. "Neither does it seem very intelligent because the costs are going to be very high for the European Union, for Russia and to some degree for everyone else . . . the inclination I see in Latin America . . . is to try to seek or imagine how there could be a political solution to this conflict," FT quoted the top diplomat as saying.

"The region is returning to its non-aligned stance," stressed former Colombian foreign minister Maria Angela Holguin. "These countries also feel that China and Russia might offer them useful support in future, for example in the event of a distancing from the United States, so they don’t want to get into a confrontation with them," the Financial Times quoted the ex-Colombian top diplomat as saying.

Brazil, Argentina and Colombia have already refused to supply weapons to Ukraine. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador criticized the German government’s decision to send tanks to the conflict zone.

Earlier, Commander of the US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, said that Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and six more Latin American countries have Russian arms and the US is working on "replacing these weapons with American ones if these states want to transfer them to Ukraine". Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing that Washington’s initiative has legal restrictions, but the Kremlin will nevertheless monitor the issue closely.

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