The APEC summit was scheduled to bring together 20 world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping.
Chile has withdrawn as host of an APEC trade summit in November where the United States and China had been expected to take major steps toward ending a 15-month-old trade war that has slowed world economic growth.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said he had taken the “painful” decision to cancel the summit in Santiago, as well as a high-profile international gathering on climate change in December, to focus on restoring law and order and pushing through a new social plan.
Chile will also not be able to host the COP25 global climate summit between Dec. 2 and Dec. 13, said Pinera, who fired almost half his cabinet this week – including his finance, interior, and economy ministers – in a bid to quell the protests.
The climate summit would have brought delegates from around 190 nations to talks aimed at thrashing out details of how to reduce global emissions to meet the Paris climate agreement.
“This has been a very difficult decision, a decision that causes us a lot of pain because we fully understand the importance of APEC and COP-25 for Chile and for the world,” Pinera said.
Source: teleSUR, Reuters.
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