GUANTÁNAMO, Cuba, May 4 (ACN) The 8th International Seminar for Peace and the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases begins today in this city with the presence of 70 delegates from Cuba and 23 other countries who will demand the elimination of these facilities in Latin America and elsewhere from the region where various U.S. administrations have illegally kept since 1903 the oldest naval base in the world.
Sponsored by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and the World Peace Council (WPC), the event will include 19 presentations by leaders and members of peace and solidarity organizations, personalities and anti-war activists.
Today’s program features a keynote speech by the President of the World Peace Council, Maria do Socorro Gomes, lectures about the status of military bases around the world and an update of the Cuba-US relations.
On Thursday, the delegates will visit Caimanera, the town adjoining the illegal Yankee naval base, where they will read the Final Declaration of the event to the local residents.
Víctor Gaute López, vice-president of ICAP, said that this seminar takes place in increasingly complex circumstances marked by growing aggressiveness and interference by US imperialism and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and remarked that the participants will back the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed by the Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) at their second Summit held in Havana in January 2014.
On May 6 there will be the Caribbean Regional Meeting of the World Peace Council, an event leading up to the 22nd World Assembly of the WPC to be held in August in Hanoi, Vietnam.
