Jewish-Arab relations is on the agenda at a summit in Chile.
The 17th Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, featuring King Juan Carlos of Spain and the leaders of Portugual, Andorra and 19 Latin American countries, began Thursday and will conclude Saturday. One of the event’s goals is to create greater social cohesion within the countries.
The heads of the Latin American Jewish Congress will meet during the summit with world leaders to stress the Jewish community’s proactive support for regional integration.
On Thursday, the congress met with the general secretary of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza. Claudio Epelman, the Jewish group’s executive director, said the congress stressed its work to support regional integration on the cultural, religious and social levels.
Prior to the summit, congress officials met Tuesday with Enrique Iglesias, the former Inter-American Development Bank president and current head of the Ibero-American Secretariat in Madrid.
“We stressed that globalization is not new for Jews. We are globalized and we indeed can offer our support to the regional integration construction,” Epelman told JTA in a telephone interview from the summit in Chile.
Also at the meeting in Spain was Jack Terpins, the president of the congress, as well as Julio Froimovich, the head of the Latin American B’nai Brith.
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