Fernández meets with US climate envoy John Kerry

President Alberto Fernández yesterday met up in Rome with John Kerry, the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the Joe Biden administration, and while the subject of their meeting was officially climate change, he was not to be steered away from the exclusive debt focus of his current European swing.

Fernández twinned the two issues in the form of proposing that the debts of countries committed to environmental policies should be lowered, a proposal he had already made to International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. 

According to the Argentine president, the idea went down well with Kerry.

The Peronist leader further congratulated Kerry on the return of the United States to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change shunned by the previous Donald Trump administration and assured the former US Secretary of State of his "absolute" commitment to Latin American co-operation when asked on that point. 

Their talk of almost an hour also touched upon Venezuela although Fernández would give no details on what was conversed. 

Following the meeting, the president told journalists he was "very happy" because "we achieved all our objectives, regarding the debt, which was what worried us most, but other issues too."

– TIMES/PERFIL