(BBC News) COLOMBIAN President Juan Manuel Santos says Cuba will not be invited to the Americas Summit in Colombia next month. Some nations had been threatening to boycott the meeting in Cartagena unless Cuba was admitted.
But speaking after talks with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana, Mr Santos said that – without a consensus – he could not make the invitation.
The US had opposed Cuba’s participation, saying the meeting should only be open to democracies.
The Americas Summit usually involves only members of the Organisation of American States (OAS), and Cuba was suspended from the organisation in 1962 because of its communist system.
Juan Manuel Santos was making the first visit to Cuba by a Colombian president in a decade.
He said Raul Castro had understood the situation and had made clear that he did not want to complicate matters for Colombia.