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| No plans to cut ties with US: Bolivia |
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009
MADRID: Bolivia has no plans to break off relations with Colombia or the United States over its opposition to US military bases in Latin America, President Evo Morales said on Monday. “Bolivia is not going to break off relations with anyone, not the United States,” Morales told diplomats and Spanish business leaders on the first day of an official visit to Madrid.
“Nobody can prevent us having relationships with other countries”, he said when asked whether La Paz would cut ties to Colombia over its military agreement with the United States.
Latin American governments have criticised the agreement between Washington and Bogota for the installation of US military bases in Colombia, which is battling a Marxist insurgency and drug trafficking.
Morales recently proposed holding a referendum in South American countries on the issue. On his arrival in Spain on Sunday the leftwing leader lashed out the US military bases as he addressed thousands of immigrants gathered at a bullring in a Madrid suburb.
“In Latin America, where there is a US military base there are military coups,” he said. “To the social movements of Europe and the world: Help us to finish with military bases in Latin America,” he said, citing the new Bolivian constitution, which forbids foreign bases on its soil. Addressing business leaders on Monday, Morales also said his country is looking for “partners” and not “owners” for its natural resources, including its vast reserves of lithium.
“We need investments,” and “companies who respect Bolivian regulations ... who don’t come to play politics” or “conspire against the government,” he said.
“We are interested in exploiting the brine and lithium, and we want to start negotiations, not just with Spanish companies,” the leftwing leader said.
The huge lithium deposits in Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni have attracted interest from French, Japanese and Korean companies. The soft, lightweight metal is considered “gray gold” in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, as mining groups from across the world are pressing for permission to get at the lithium to produce batteries for electric or hybrid cars. Morales is to meet Spanish King Juan Carlos I and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero later on Monday.
One of Latin America’s best known writers, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, condemned the welcome that Spain is extending to the Bolivian president, whom he considers as undemocratic.
“I regret very much that the Spanish government is supporting Evo Morales, he is not a democratic president,” the author of “Death in the Andes” and “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” told reporters in Madrid.
Morales, Bolivia’s first Indian president, “has a clear authoritarian streak” and is not fostering the peacefully co-existence of different ethnic groups, he added.
In January Bolivian voters approved a new constitution which gives the country’s poor indigenous majority more power, lets Morales run for re-election and hands the socialist president even tighter control over the economy.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
