Chile’s President Sebastian Piñera leaves at the end of a ceremony introducing his reshuffled Cabinet at La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile, Monday, Oct. 28, 2019. Piñera asked all his Cabinet members to offer their resignations Saturday as he prepared to shake up his government in response to a wave of protests, including one that drew more than a million people on Friday. (Photo by Esteban Felix / AP)
SANTIAGO, Chile — Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said Wednesday that protests roiling the country have pushed him to call off two major international summits that his country had been scheduled to host.
Piñera said Chile would not host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit set for Nov. 16-17 and the global climate gathering planned for Dec. 2-13. It wasn’t immediately clear if they would be shifted to another country.
“This has been a very difficult decision that causes us great pain,” Piñera said in a televised address.
But he added, “A president always has to put the needs of his compatriots first.”
The South American nation has seen 12 days of massive protests to demand greater economic equality and better public services. The demonstrations have been accompanied by some vandalism and arson, which forced the shutdown of numerous subway stations.
U.S. and Chinese negotiators were hoping to finalize a modest trade agreement in time for Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to sign it at the APEC summit in Santiago. Under the tentative deal, the U.S. had agreed to suspend plans to raise tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports, and Beijing had agreed to step up purchases of U.S. farm products.
U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa issued a statement saying that “alternative hosting options” were being explored. And a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to comment publicly, said that all U.N. venues are being considered as options. Those would include cities such as New York, Geneva, Bonn, Vienna and Nairobi.
One of the main topics for this year’s meeting was to be setting up rules governing how countries can work jointly to cut emissions, as opposed to nation-by-nation efforts.
Even if cancelling the Santiago climate conference means those rules don’t get written this year, “the absence of rules does not stop countries from acting either alone or together” to cut emissions, said Nigel Purvis, a climate and environment negotiator in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. “It really shouldn’t slow down climate action.”
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