SANTIAGO, May 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to relocate his nation's Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem runs "counter to international law," visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday.
The move also "strips the U.S. of credibility as a mediator" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Abbas told reporters at a press conference in Chile's capital Santiago.
Relations between Palestine and the United States reached an all-time low in December, when Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv.
The controversial embassy move is expected to be made on Monday.
Abbas, accompanied by his Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Malki and ambassador in Chile Imad Nabil Jada'a, met with Chile's President Sebastian Pinera at the government palace in Santiago.
"The relationship between Chile and Palestine is a relationship that not only goes back in time, but that has also been very vital, very close, very appreciated and very friendly," said Pinera.
Chile was one of the first countries to open a representative office in Palestine and advocated for Palestine's entry into the United Nations as a non-member observer state, the president said, adding his country backs the two-state solution to the long-running conflict.
Palestine has "Chile's support to be a free, independent, autonomous and sovereign state," said Pinera.
Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East region, with some 350,000 Palestinians living in the country.
Abbas is on a three-nation tour of Latin America that took him first to Venezuela. He next travels to Cuba.
