Analysts question US leadership at Summit of the Americas 3:34
(CNN) --
The Mexican president's decision to boycott the Summit of the Americas, where regional leaders meet this week in Los Angeles, rendered months of work by President Joe Biden and other top officials to convince him to attend useless.
Now, key countries in Central America are following the example of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO, as he is known), sending only lower-level delegates instead of their presidents.
And by the time Biden arrives at the Summit of the Americas on Wednesday, questions about the event's guest list and attendees will have obscured its larger purpose, a source of frustration for administration officials who didn't necessarily expect disaster.
The decision by several countries to stay away from the meeting in Southern California, a protest against Biden's decision not to invite three regional autocrats, has underscored the struggle to exert US influence in a region that it has fractured politically and is struggling economically.
And it has exposed the difficulties and contradictions in Biden's promise to restore democratic values to American foreign policy.
Although he opposes inviting dictators to a summit on US soil, drawing the ire and boycott of those key regional partners, his advisers are simultaneously planning a visit to Saudi Arabia, seen as a necessity at a time of crisis. global energy crisis, despite the kingdom's dire human rights record.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that the kingdom is an "important partner," even though Biden once said she must become a "pariah."
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In the end, the White House announced Tuesday that 23 heads of state will attend the Summit of the Americas this week, which administration officials said was in line with past iterations of the triennial gathering.
One of the leaders who was undecided, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, will attend the summit and meet with Biden for the first time.
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Yet the absences of the presidents of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala remain notable as the United States has worked to cultivate those leaders as partners on immigration, an issue that looms as a political liability for Biden.
US government officials on Monday dismissed concerns about attendance at the summit, saying they did not believe the presence of lower-level delegates from certain countries would alter the outcome.
"We really hope that participation will not be in any way a barrier to reaching meaningful agreements at the summit. In fact, on the contrary, we are very satisfied with the way the final product is shaping up and with the commitment of other countries to it." said a senior government official, adding that the commitments will vary from short to long term.
And the White House insisted that the president was adamant that the autocratic leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua should not be invited to participate, even if it means widening differences with other countries in the region.
"At the end of the day, to your question, we just don't think dictators should be invited. We don't regret it, and the president will stay true to his principle," Jean-Pierre said.
Trouble has been on the horizon for months before the Summit of the Americas
Biden, who arrives in Los Angeles on Wednesday, is expected to announce during the meeting a new partnership with countries in the Western Hemisphere as part of a broader effort to stabilize the region, officials said.
He and his administration have been working since last year to organize the summit, which was formally announced last August.
The city of Los Angeles was selected as the venue in January.
Biden named former Sen. Chris Dodd, his friend and former colleague on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a special adviser to the event.
Dodd traveled to the region to rally support, he was one of the administration's envoys to Central and South America that included Vice President Kamala Harris and even First Lady Jill Biden.
However, as the summit drew closer, it became clear that an event designed to reassert US leadership in the region faced serious obstacles.
For weeks before the summit began, López Obrador hinted that he would boycott it unless all the region's leaders were invited, including those of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, each of whom has faced opposition from the United States. States because of its human rights record.
Other leaders, mostly from the left, pointed out that they, too, would not be able to attend if the invitations did not reach everyone.
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AMLO questions who the US invites to the Summit of the Americas 4:19
Administration officials privately expressed doubt that those leaders would follow through on their threats, suggesting that they were instead attempts to game national audiences that are often skeptical of the United States.
During an April phone call between Biden and López Obrador, the subject of the summit came up.
In a summary of the call, the White House said the men "looked forward to meeting again at the Summit of the Americas in June," a sign the administration believed AMLO would attend the summit.
Over the past few weeks, Dodd has spent lengthy virtual sessions pressuring López Obrador to reconsider his boycott threat.
Some members of Congress, including Senator Bob Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, began to speak out publicly against inviting any leader from Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua.
And frustration mounted among administration officials that questions about invitations and attendees were clouding the summit's intended goals.
"The biggest problem is that the focus on attendance takes us away from the focus on the substance, but that's the logical thing to do before a summit. It's like the sausage-making period. We don't talk much about the substance because the summit hasn't started yet, we just talked about who might be there," said Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico who also served as an adviser to Biden on southern border policy.
In the end, the weeks of speculation ended, but not in the way the White House hoped.
"There cannot be a Summit of the Americas if all the countries of the Americas cannot attend," López Obrador said at a news conference in Mexico City.
"This is continuing with the old interventionist policies, of disrespect for nations and their peoples."
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Mexico president's absence not part of larger rift, officials say
Mexican officials had communicated their president's decision to the White House in advance, and Biden learned of it before the news was made public.
Instead of meeting at the summit, Biden and López Obrador will meet in Washington next month.
"The fact that they disagree on this issue is now very clear," a senior administration official said.
Officials tried to emphasize that the boycott decision was based on a specific disagreement over the guest list and was not indicative of a larger break.
"What we have done in the last few weeks, for almost a month now, is consulted, consulted with our partners and friends in the region so that we understand the contours of their views," the senior administration official said.
"In the end, the president decided and emphasized this point in all the commitments that we had ... and that is that we believe that the best use of this summit is to bring together countries that share a set of democratic principles."
Biden is turning his attention to the Americas after a series of foreign policy crises in other parts of the world, including the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
She completed her first visit to Asia at the end of last month.
That region is one where his cheering message of "autocracy versus democracy" is playing out in real time, as China works to make progress and economically challenged nations look abroad for support.
In opening remarks on Wednesday, Biden will unveil the so-called "partnership of the Americas" that will focus on five themes, including economic recovery, mobilizing investment, supply chains, clean energy and trade, all hoping to strengthen American partnerships in a region that many American leaders have been accused of ignoring.
During the summit, Biden is also expected to announce more than $300 million in assistance to combat food insecurity, in addition to other private sector commitments, as well as health initiatives and a partnership on climate resilience.
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As the summit began, the imperative to move forward on immigration was clearly exemplified in southern Mexico.
A new migrant caravan set out on foot Monday, timed to draw attention to the issue as leaders gather in Los Angeles.
An official from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that a group of about 2,300 people left the city of Tapachula, in southern Mexico, heading north on Monday.
The official said the group is mostly made up of people from Venezuela, but also includes migrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador and Honduras.
A regional immigration group, the Collective for the Observation and Monitoring of Human Rights in SE Mexico, said in a bulletin that the group mainly included families and children "who demand access to immigration procedures and dignified treatment by the authorities." .
Tapachula, located across the border from Guatemala, is a popular way station for migrants traveling from Central America.
Under Mexican immigration law, migrants and asylum seekers are often forced to wait in the area for several months with limited job opportunities.
Migrant caravans heading north have left Tapachula regularly over the past year, though this week's appears to be one of the largest.
This caravan was partially assembled to protest immigration policies and it would be weeks before they reached the southern US border, assuming they all make it.
In Los Angeles, Biden and other leaders are expected to agree on a new migration document, called the Los Angeles Declaration, during their meetings on Friday.
Its objective is to explain how countries in the region and around the world must share the responsibility of welcoming migrants.
Officials said they were confident Mexico would sign.
-- CNN's Priscilla Alvarez and David Shortell contributed to this report.
The Summit of the Americas