EU and Latin American leaders hold a summit hoping to rekindle relationship with long-lost friends

By RAF CASERT
Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — Leaders from the European Union and Latin America have gingerly hugged at the opening of their first summit in eight years. But Monday’s opening session didn’t turn into a joyful reunion of long-lost friends. Leaders from across the Atlantic have brought century-old recrimnations of colonialism and slavery to the EU’s headquarters and added current-day complaints that Europe still doesn’t know how to treat old colonies as equal partners in the 21st century. European leaders acknowledge that the exploitation of old was fundamentally wrong yet insist that the challenges of today can only be tackled effectively when they do it together.