G77+China Summit to tackle 'core' development issues, says Cuban top diplomat

HAVANA - The upcoming Group of 77 plus China (G77+China) Summit Havana this Friday and Saturday will tackle "core" development issues, Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Wednesday.

"The summit aims to evaluate and debate the main challenges and core issues of the development of the nations of the South," Rodriguez said at a press conference.

Li Xi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, will attend the summit as the special representative of Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Held under the banner "Current development challenges: the role of science, technology and innovation", the summit is set to issue a final declaration that will include the purposes and principles of the bloc and address the needs of developing countries, said Rodriguez.

According to the minister, the declaration will be approved at the final session of the summit, which will draw delegations from over 100 countries, including about 30 heads of state or government, and the declaration will be "progressive, universal in scope, and with a positive and constructive tone".

The declaration will highlight developing nations' "right to development amid an increasingly exclusive, inequitable, unjust and plundering international order", he pointed out.

As a result of an extensive negotiation process, the document identifies the main obstacles to development in the nations of the South. It demands establishing a new international economic order and substantial reform of the global financial architecture.

It calls for adequately dealing with growing foreign debt; compliance with international commitments to official development aid, which is "a moral obligation of industrialized countries", and financing for the fight against climate change, said the minister.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will speak at the summit's opening, together with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

Cuba took on the rotating presidency of the G77 plus China this January.

The G77 is a group of developing countries first established in 1964. Today, the bloc gathers 134 member countries or over two-thirds of UN member countries.