Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela unlikely to join summit: US official | Al Jazeera |

State Department official says three gov'ts unlikely to be at Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June.

The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are likely to be excluded from the Ninth Summit of the Americas, which will be hosted by the United States in June, a senior US State Department official has said.

"They are unlikely to be there," US Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols told a small group of reporters on Wednesday, saying the summit of regional leaders would focus on the Western Hemisphere's democracies.

The comments marked the clearest message that those three governments, all on bad terms with Washington, will be snubbed once the White House releases the invitation list. That announcement would come soon, Nichols added.

His remarks come just days after Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez accused the Biden administration of pressuring regional governments to block Cuba from participating in the summit.

"There is no justification for excluding Cuba or any other country from this event that we have attended the last two editions," he said.

The US and Cuba last week held their first high-level talks in four years, but tensions persist between the two nations over migration, ongoing American sanctions against the island and the Cuban government's recent crackdown on opposition protesters.