AJC Congratulates Argentine President-Elect Macri

NEW YORK, Nov. 24, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization, congratulates Mauricio Macri on his election as president of Argentina.

Argentinians "have seen in you unique leadership qualities that are necessary today to meet the growing demands for democracy and respect for human rights in an increasingly globalized and interdependent world," AJC Executive Director David Harris and Dina Siegel Vann, director of AJC's Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs (BILLA), wrote in a letter to Macri after his electoral victory.

Through BILLA, created in 2005, AJC maintains extensive relations with governments and Jewish communities throughout Latin America, and has an association agreement with AMIA, the vital organization in Latin America's largest Jewish community.  Macri's two predecessors, Presidents Nestor and Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, each addressed the annual AJC Global Forum in Washington, D.C.

Harris and Siegel Vann urged Macri to continue supporting "all measures to promote truth and justice in the AMIA bombing case, including the revocation of the failed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran." Iran has been directly implicated in the terrorist attack that destroyed the AMIA Jewish community center, killing 85 and injuring hundreds, in July 1994. Macri has vowed to cancel the MOU, which AJC vigorously opposed from the moment of its promulgation in 2013.

"We hope that during your tenure, bilateral relations among Argentina, the United States and Israel will be strengthened based on shared agendas, which include the fight against terrorism," wrote Harris and Siegel Vann.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee