US President Joe Biden’s administration turned down a meeting request with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on an unannounced trip to Washington last week, as criticism of the Central American leader mounts among Democrats, three people with knowledge of the decision said on Monday.
The trip by Bukele, which has not been previously reported, came after a senior White House official warned in an interview with a Salvadoran news outlet highly critical of Bukele that the Biden administration expected to have “differences” with him.
Bukele was quick to embrace former US president Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies restricting asylum requests, which won him a great deal of US support for his tough governing style in El Salvador, where he is popular.
Photo: AP
However, like other world leaders befriended by Trump, he faces an uphill climb pivoting to the Biden administration, which is seeking to undo those policies and has signaled its relationship with El Salvador is under review.
The president’s surprise trip amid a pandemic posed a dilemma for US policy makers. They were given little advance notice and are mostly avoiding in-person meetings due to COVID-19 and because many senior positions remain vacant, said the three people, all of whom are in Washington and insisted on speaking anonymously in return for discussing internal decisionmaking.
In rejecting the request, the Biden officials wanted to ensure Bukele did not try to tout any meeting as a show of support before legislative elections later this month where he is seeking to expand his power base, the people said.
However, they did make an exception for Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno, who met in Washington with senior Biden officials 11 days before the Andean nation’s presidential election.
Bukele insisted that the trip was private and that he did not request any meeting with Biden officials.
What “president in the world will go to a trip with his wife and baby girl to sit down in Washington and ask for random meetings to be held immediately? That doesn’t even make sense,” he said in a text message.
The three people did not say how the request for a meeting was made, but they said the decision not to meet with Bukele was deliberate.
While the Biden administration hopes to eventually engage Bukele in its US$4 billion plan to attack the root causes of migration from Central America, it has serious concerns about his respect for the rule of law and democracy, they said.
“Clearly conditions have changed for Bukele,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch in Washington. “His popularity in El Salvador doesn’t insulate him from legitimate scrutiny in Washington over his record on human rights and respect for the rule of law.”
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