Foreign Ministry strike leads Netanyahu to cancels Latin America trip

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to cancel an historic visit to Latin America scheduled for April due to the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s strike.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper today quoted Foreign Ministry sources as saying that Netanyahu was forced to cancel his visit to Mexico, Colombia and Panama as Foreign Ministry staff have refused for the past two weeks to coordinate the premier’s visits in protest of failures to improve their employment conditions.

Netanyahu planned to spend several days in Latin America. The visit would have been the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to these countries.

A senior official at the Foreign Ministry said Netanyahu’s visit to Colombia could have provided political support to the Colombian President Jose Manuel Santos during the upcoming presidential elections in May and that Santos expressed his disappointment that the visit had been cancelled.