PRESIDENT CHAVES:
[Via interpreter] Good morning, fellow citizens. On this very happy occasion
where we receive this visit from the Secretary of State of Costa Rica’s main
ally in the world, it is currently dulled by the
death of Official Zamora from
the legal investigation group who was cowardly slain by members of the criminal
organizations that we are fighting with all of our strength and with support
from the United States of America. My deepest condolences to Mr. Geiner’s
family, his wife, Ms. Susana. I believe this makes us reflect why we in this
country must have tighter laws against paid assassins, drug trafficking, and
international drug trafficking. It’s not a matter of giving more or spending
more money, but rather it’s a matter of ensuring that those who are a threat to
our society are sent to jail and make sure they remain there.
On a different note, it is a great honor, on a
personal level, Mr. Secretary, to receive this visit from such a high-level
official from our main ally, the United States of America, Mr. Marco Rubio. I
believe the
relationship between both countries is strong, where we agree on
what we want for our respective people. We want prosperity. We want peace. We
want law and order. We want our states and our societies to be prosperous, where
people have the right to be happy and pursue their own happiness. And that is
why we have had this historic relationship with the United States.
During this visit, we were able to outline our
ongoing cooperation roadmap with this new administration. And I believe that we
reached significant agreements around illegal immigration. We understand that
Costa Rica is one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America, and it is a
destination for migration. We also understand that we need to strengthen our
fight against international organized crime, which is something that Mr.
Secretary has very generously offered to continue helping with, and help us with
the waivers to -- that freeze aid in that area for our country.
We also talked about cyber security. But I would
like you to hear from him about all the details. But nonetheless, Mr. Secretary,
it’s an honor. It’s a pleasure. And I believe that we have paved the way for our
joint work based on shared values, interests, and hopes. Welcome to Costa Rica.
SECSTATE RUBIO:
[Via interpreter] Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for being here. Thank you
for this warm welcome to this warm country that’s an ally with the United
States, where we have a lot in common. We have shared history, values, and
people. A lot of American people have decided to move to Costa Rica and live
here, and I believe that that’s because of the stability and security that this
country has to offer.
We also want to give our most -- express our most
deep -- deepest condolences for the loss of life of an officer that faced
organized crime. And the most sacred thing that a government can offer to a
society is security.
We have talked about common ground today. First of
all, we talked about 5G and the importance of having cyber security. All of the
technologies that will advance the economies in this century will be based on
telecommunication and technology. And you have been very kind because you will
allow -- you will not allow companies that pose a threat to national security or
economic security and to -- and when you take a stand against companies like
that, there’s consequences. There’s threats, there’s blackmailing, and there’s
attempts to infiltrate different government agencies. And you have had a staunch
position of that, and we will continue to work and help with that. Because this
is an issue -- cyber security -- that we also face in the United States.
In this country, they have over 100 million cyber
attacks a year. That is unacceptable. And we continue to build up on what we
have so that we can face this foreign threat. Because it’s -- this threat is
used to compromise your system and threaten the state and its economy. This is
something that we need to discuss, and we will cooperate on.
Unfortunately, when there’s efforts like these, there are individuals in power
and in certain agencies that are willing, for different reasons, to support that
which is contrary to the interest of the state and its people. So, we will work
together to see what kind of consequences we will impose when something like
that happens and to see how we can help you to punish this attitude by
high-ranking government officials that are not working for the good of their
national interests. So, anything that we can do to help in that, we will.
In terms of national security, we have the threat of these drug terrorist groups
that use your country because of your geographic location as a transit point,
with all the problems that come with that. So we will collaborate with you; we
will investigate to see how we can involve the DEA and the FBI from the United
States, working under your security teams here, so that they can investigate
cases that are around drugs that are to be sent to the United States and other
places. But this is -- we’re -- this is work now we are going to build on.
I would like to congratulate you. I was here only once before, in 2017, for the
first time, when that problem was just starting to surface. And you had done a
commendable effort to face that. So, we will support you 100 percent.
And finally in terms of migration, you are a country that is not only used for
transit but designation as well, because this is an advanced economy where there
is job opportunities, and a lot of people want to stay. But you have also seen
that there has been attempt to come through your borders, migration that are
from different countries like -- and continents such as Africa. And these people
may have ties to terrorism, but they were in route to the United States. So, we
will continue to work as strongly as ever with biometrics, et cetera, to
identify these people and prevent them from damaging you, us, or any other
country in the region for that matter.
And one of my priorities is to ensure that the U.S. foreign policy shows --
sends a signal that it’s better to be a friend than an enemy; it’s better to be
an ally than a troublemaker. And unfortunately, this has not been the case in
the past -- in several administrations in the past. And this is a complaint that
I heard time after time -- with my time in the Senate -- that sometimes it’s
better to be the United States enemy than friend. Because if you are your
friend, you’re overlooked and ignored, and even criticized. But if you are an
enemy, they want to come up with some arrangement, negotiate. And we cannot have
a foreign policy that rewards those who wants to harm us and ignore those who
cooperate with us. This is going to change under President Trump’s
Administration, and I hope that today’s visit is the initial signal to say that
President Trump will be a friend to their allies and will work together with
your allies, especially when it’s a country like this that we take as an
example, as a model that we would like other countries around the world to
follow.
If I may briefly say a few words in English.
PRESIDENT CHAVES: Please go ahead, sir.
SECSTATE RUBIO: [Via interpreter] He speaks
perfect English, by the way.
[In English] Just briefly, it’s important to be
here in Costa Rica. It’s a country that I believe is a model for what we want to
see other countries in the region become and, frankly, the world. And there’s so
much to work together on.
First, I want to congratulate and thank the President. They’ve been very firm on
the security of their 5G system, on only allowing trusted vendors to bid on it.
It’s important. 5G is going to be critical technology for the development of all
of the industries that are going to drive the 21st century. But it has to be
secure. And when you confront companies that are not secure, they’re backed by
governments like the Government of China that likes to threaten, that
likes to
sabotage, that likes to use economic coercion to punish you. And they’ve been
very firm, and I think they deserve a lot of support in confronting that and in
carrying out a process of responsibly bringing 5G, which is going to be
essential to future economic development.
This is a country that’s also facing a cyber security issue. It’s very serious
-- 110 million cyber attacks a year for a country of this size -- it’s
extraordinary, and they have faced it very bravely. We’re going to continue to
work on what we’re already doing together to help them secure their
telecommunication systems and more broadly against cyber attacks. I think it’s
also important to understand that oftentimes, unfortunately, when you confront
elements such as these, there are efforts to undermine your institutions by
individuals in the government that should be working in the national interest
but instead have found, for some reason, to become complicit with malign actors.
And so, we’re going to try to work in cooperation with you to impose costs on
those within the country who use their positions of authority to undermine the
interests of the people of Costa Rica and in favor of a malign foreign actor.
And the issue of narco-traffickers -- this is not a country that produces drugs
because of geography. It is a place where people, these elements try to traffic
drugs, and you’ve done extraordinary work in preventing those drugs from getting
out. And we are going to continue to work with you on providing the technologies
-- that’s what these waivers are about today -- to prevent the exportation of
drugs. But when you confront these groups, they become violent, and they become
vicious. And so, we want to see how we can work, perhaps by allowing more DEA
and FBI resources to conduct investigations together with your police and your
law enforcement, to identify and help you capture and arrest them and bring them
to justice.
And last but not least, on the issue of migration, which is a catastrophe of
mass migration, Costa Rica is not a source of migration, but it is a route
that’s used for migration. Because it’s an advanced economy unlike many of the
other countries along the migratory route, some decide to stay, and you’ve done
that at great cost, especially due to the instability in Nicaragua, where so
many have left to flee that -- but the cost -- 20 percent of the population at
this point here is from another country. And I know it’s been extraordinary.
But the one area we’ve really worked very closely on is biometric data sharing.
We want to build on that because -- because we are seeing, and you have seen,
and they have confronted here elements from all over the world -- from other
continents, from Africa, from the Middle East -- that have links to terrorism,
that have been stopped through our biometric sharing programs and identified and
prevented from moving forward and doing God knows what if they had ever reached
the United States. That’s an important partnership and it’s one we want to build
on, and we’re going to look for opportunities to build on and make stronger than
ever through intelligence sharing, biometric sharing in real time, and very
close coordination to ensure that this never becomes a place where terrorists
can transit and do harm somewhere else.
It’s an honor to be here. As I said, one of my priorities as Secretary of State
is to ensure that, under President Trump, we have a foreign policy in which we
are strong and providing support to our allies, and it’s been the reverse for a
very long time. It has seemed as if it’s almost better to be an enemy of the
United States than to be a friend. If you’re a friend, you get sanctioned, you
get criticized, and you get ignored. If you’re an enemy or an adversary, we make
concessions and cut deals and do all sorts of things to try to get on your good
side, and that needs to change.
We need to have a foreign policy in which we are firm in confronting those that
seek to do harm to the United States, and we are strong in support of those that
work so closely with us, and in the case of Costa Rica serve as a model to what
we hope the region and other countries around the world will one day become.
Thank you.
MODERATOR: [Via interpreter] Thank you very
much, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State of the United States. Thank you very much,
and thank you to the President of the Republic Rodrigo Chaves. We’ll start with
the round of questions. We’ll start with our colleague Lucía Pineda from 100%
Noticias.
QUESTION: [Via interpreter] Good morning to both of you. Mr. Secretary of
State, I’d like to hear a bit if you discussed Nicaragua, CAFTA. We’d heard that
it was -- that you could talk about removing Nicaragua from CAFTA but you don’t
want it to affect its allies. What mechanisms did you agree upon in that regard,
taking into consideration that there are no exclusion clauses that provide for
removing a country from CAFTA?
And I’d like to continue with the issue of deportations. What’s going to happen
to Nicaraguans who were rejected in Nicaragua, who are not accepted by the
regime, they’re not allowed in? And the actions of Cuba, Nicaragua, and
Venezuela -- what is the position of the U.S. vis-a-vis your three enemies on
this continent? How are you going to react?
SECSTATE RUBIO: [Via interpreter] Well,
first of all, in my opinion, those three regimes that exist in Nicaragua,
Venezuela, and Cuba are enemies of humanity, and they have created a migration
crisis. If it were not for these three regimes, there would not be a migration
crisis in the hemisphere. They have created it because they are countries whose
systems do not work.
In the case of Nicaragua, it’s turned into a family dynasty with a co-presidency
where they’ve basically tried to eliminate the Catholic Church and the religious
community, and anyone who tries to take power from that regime is punished. And
you’ve seen that. We’ve seen thousands and thousands of Nicaraguans who are
fleeing that system for the same reason people are leaving Cuba or Venezuela. In
the meantime, as I said in my words, there are more U.S. citizens living here
than Costa Ricans living in the U.S., which is an example of what happens when a
country does things right as opposed to those countries.
Now, when it comes to CAFTA, the administration has not taken a position on
exactly what role Nicaragua will have within an agreement that existed to reward
democracy. And today we must acknowledge that Nicaragua is not a democracy. It
doesn’t work as one. But we need to study that carefully because there are
impacts with removing a country, and it could have an impact on neighboring
countries who are part of that arrangement.
But that is something that we’ll take very seriously, but for now we have not
established an official position, because today is my two-week anniversary in
this position, and I think it will take longer than two weeks to determine this.
But I understand that it’s a serious issue.
MODERATOR: [Via interpreter] John Hudson
from The Washington Post.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. On President Bukele’s offer to jail
incarcerated Americans in El Salvador, is that something you’d like to see
happen?
And separately, there have been accounts of the U.S. exemptions on President
Trump’s aid freeze not working, resulting in clinics for HIV medication in
Africa shutting down, the suspension of de-mining in Cambodia, and challenges
for the malaria prevention program PMI. Are these waiver problems a thing you’re
seeing and looking to address? Thank you.
SECSTATE RUBIO: Yeah. Let me address the
first one. That’s an offer President Bukele made. Obviously, we’ll have to study
it on our end. There are obviously legalities involved. We have a Constitution,
we have all sorts of things. But it’s a very generous offer. No one’s ever made
an offer like that, and -- to outsource at a fraction of the cost at least some
of the most dangerous and violent criminals that we have in the United States.
But obviously, the administration will have to make a decision, and it’s -- but
it’s -- I raised it yesterday because it’s an incredible offer, an unprecedented
one.
On the second point, look, we froze foreign aid so that we can review those
programs. The waiver process exists so that we can review those programs. Today,
here, we’ve issued waivers for programs that make all the sense in the world.
They make America safer. They make America stronger, because the programs we’ve
issued a waiver for are helping our trusted partners intercept and stop drugs
and terrorists from coming into the United States.
But I issued a blanket waiver that said if this is lifesaving programs, okay --
if it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is
immediate and urgent, you’re not included in the freeze. I don’t know how much
more clear we can be than that.
And I would say if some organization is receiving funds from the United States
and does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the
competence of that organization, or I wonder whether they’re deliberately
sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point.
I want to repeat what I’ve said: I have long supported foreign aid. I continue
to support foreign aid. But foreign aid is not charity. It exists for the
purpose of advancing the national interest of the United States. Every dollar we
will spend as long as I’m Secretary of State -- and as long as President Trump
is in the White House is going to be a dollar that’s advancing our national
interests.
And you see this here today. These are programs that work. This is the kind of
foreign aid we need to do. And there are programs that we have questions about
that do not further the national interest, and they should be eliminated. And
then there are those we need to learn more about.
But I have -- we have a blanket waiver. It’s been out for a week, and anybody
who tells you they don’t understand it, let me repeat it in very simple words.
If it saves lives, if it’s emergency lifesaving aid -- food, medicine, whatever
-- they have a waiver. I don’t know how much clearer we can be. And if they’re
not applying it, then maybe they’re not a very good organization and maybe they
shouldn’t be getting money at all.
MODERATOR: Alejandro Urbina, Trivisión.
QUESTION: [Via interpreter] Good morning, Mr. President. Secretary Rubio,
welcome to Costa Rica. We’ve learned that this morning before your meeting with
the President Rodrigo Chaves you held a meeting with two former ministers of
this administration. We’d like to know if you can share a bit about the contents
of the meeting with former Minister Laura Fernández and Minister Batalla, and if
you will have additional meetings in our country with a similar interest as the
meetings you had this morning.
SECSTATE RUBIO: [Via interpreter] No, these
are two people who up until a few days they were in government and during that
time, during their time in government, they had been very strong allies of the
United States with whom we exchanged -- we shared ideas and values. I know they
were outside, out of government. I wasn’t going to have another chance to meet
with them and I had the chance to greet them today and thank them for all of
their cooperation. They’ve been very firm voices in everything we’ve talked
about today. These are people who understand very well the threats that Chinese
companies represent to economic sovereignty and the security of countries, and
we simply wanted to thank them for everything they did in their positions during
their time in government, in the cabinet, knowing that they have left
government.
MODERATOR: [Via interpreter] Shaun Tandon
from the AFP.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary and Mr. President.
Mr. Secretary, could I follow up my colleague John’s -- John’s remarks, his
questions about the aid? You talk about the United States being a strong
partner. China, of course, is doing aid projects around the world. When you have
these drastic changes, what does it do to American soft power? Is there a
question about the U.S. using leverage perhaps against some of these programs
that are there?
And also, you mentioned there are, of course, legalities involved in sending
prisoners overseas, if you could explain that. Obviously, there’s the
Constitution. What type of human rights protections would prisoners have if
they’re being sent overseas? Does that -- is that a question that you raised
with President Bukele?
And Mr. President, you’re, of course, a development expert. How do you feel
about the cuts in U.S. assistance or the changes in U.S. assistance, and how
will this change worldwide and change with the competition with China? Thank
you.
SECSTATE RUBIO: Well, let me just answer
the first -- the second question is, again, President Bukele made an offer. We
communicated it to the public. He communicated it to the public. We’ll have to
study it and see how something like that could even be applied.
On the first question about aid, no one’s talked -- this is a 90-day freeze
through which it allows us now to review programs. Before we did the freeze we
couldn’t find out anything about some of these programs, and USAID in particular
they refused to tell us anything. We won’t tell you what the money is going to,
where the money is for, who has it, which contractor it’s been -- in some cases
it goes through four different contractors before it reaches the intended
recipient. These are not my numbers. These are USAID’s number.
In some cases, with USAID, 10, 12, 13 percent, maybe less of the money was
actually reaching the recipient and the rest was going into the overhead and the
bureaucracy. This isn’t my money. This is taxpayer money. So, we’re not going to
eliminate foreign aid. We’re going to have foreign aid that makes sense. We’re
going to have foreign aid that works. We’re going to have foreign aid that
furthers the national interest. We’re going to have foreign aid that benefits
our trusted partners and our allies.
I am here today -- we’ve issued a waiver today -- because in Costa Rica we have
a trusted partner and an ally who has proven that they have taken aid from the
United States and used it to fix a problem, to help us, to do it in a way that
actually helps the United States. They’re stopping drugs. They’re stopping
criminals. They’re identifying terrorists. This is foreign aid that furthers the
national interest.
Other programs we have questions about, and -- but we’ve also issued waivers
because we don’t want anybody -- to see anybody die or anybody be harmed in the
short term. But we are going to conduct a review, and we are going to have
foreign aid in this country that is going to further the national interest of
the United States. If it doesn’t make us stronger or more prosperous or more
secure, we aren’t going to spend taxpayer money on it. We owe that to the people
of our country.
MODERATOR: [Via interpreter] Final words
from President Chaves and Marco Rubio before we end.
PRESIDENT CHAVES: [Via interpreter] In that
order?
MODERATOR: [Via interpreter] Yes.
PRESIDENT CHAVES: [Via interpreter] Mr.
Secretary, it has been an honor to have you here. I am extremely pleased that we
have come to fundamental agreements for our common interests in both countries.
The partnership between the U.S. and Costa Rica is strong, and under your
leadership and the leadership of President Trump we will make it even stronger,
because it’s dark before light but we are looking at each other and seeing eye
to eye on these very important issues. Thank you very much, and it’s been a
great pleasure. Thank you.
SECSTATE RUBIO: [Via interpreter] Thank you
very much for having us and thank you for your cooperation and our friendship as
peoples and as countries. We will continue to work on that foundation, and do
very important things that will help not only improve lives in the U.S., in
Costa Rica. It will be a model for the region and for the world. God bless you
all and thank you very much.
PRESIDENT CHAVES: [Via interpreter] Amen.
God bless you as well.
MODERATOR: [Via interpreter] Thank you very
much to both of you and thank you to our colleagues from the press. Thank you
for everyone who’s been following this broadcast on social media. God bless.
Have a good afternoon.
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