As his country on Thursday became the sixth to move its embassy to Jerusalem, Paraguay President Santiago Peña told Newsmax about the central South American nation's deep ties with the Jewish state.
"When you start looking into this history and you see so much resemblance to what the people of Israel have been going through, this is the most important bond that we have," Peña told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" and Middle East correspondent Jodie Cohen. "Our faith, our sense of community, of the well-being for everybody and the aspiration to have a place where you can be known as an Israeli or in the case of Paraguay, be known as a Paraguayan."
In December 2017 under Donald Trump, the U.S. was the first nation to move its embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize the city as Israel's capital. Other countries with embassies in Jerusalem include Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea. Peña said moving Paraguay's embassy there "is something that everybody in Paraguay was expecting to happen."
"I campaigned on this," he said. "I talked to the entire nation. My intention and the reasons behind the decision to reopen the embassy here in Jerusalem is we have a very strong tie with the people of Israel, with the Jewish people. For us, a of course, it's important as a signal, as a political signal in this difficult moment for Israel."
Peña said he expects a second Trump administration "will be very positive [for] Latin America in general, but Paraguay in particular."
"We are very good friends of the U.S., and we are friends with whoever is in the administration," he said. "We're going to work with whoever was elected. But the truth is, if you look at the statistics, every [U.S.] Republican government was much closer to Latin America than a Democrat government. For example, in our case, no Paraguayan president … was received at the White House by a Democrat. It was only Republicans.
"This is a clear signal that we're going to have a better dialogue, a closer dialogue. It's not that we had no dialogue or bad dialogue, but it's going to be much better."
Peña said Trump and Paraguay stand for the same things and that Paraguay, which he said has a blossoming economy, does not present an immigration problem to the U.S. as other South American countries do.
Peña also noted Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in February became the first U.S. senator in more than 40 years to visit Paraguay, and how Trump's pick for deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, lived in Paraguay when his father George Landau was the U.S. ambassador in the 1970s.
"All these things give us a lot of enthusiasm," Peña said. "There is much more for us to offer on these bilateral relations. … This puts Paraguay probably in the best position to have a very rich dialogue with the Trump administration."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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