Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Saturday that Bolivia does not need US help to control its coca crop, stepping up his anti-Washington rhetoric days after rejecting a US request to fly an anti-drug plane over the South American nation’s territory.
Morales also compared US counter-drug efforts in the country, including Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) flights, to espionage.
“It’s important that the international community knows that here, we don’t need control of the United States on coca cultivation,” the president told a gathering of coca farmers. “We can control ourselves internally. We don’t need any spying from anybody.”
PHOTO: AP
US embassy spokesman Eric Watnik said the DEA makes periodic requests to fly a plane transporting US and Bolivian anti-narcotics personnel around the country. The aircraft is not used for surveillance, he said.
Relations between Washington and La Paz have continued to deteriorate in recent weeks. Morales expelled the US ambassador last month, accusing him of supporting deadly protests organized by his conservative opposition. The former ambassador denies the allegations.
The US responded by ousting Bolivia’s ambassador and later placed the Andean country on an anti-narcotics blacklist, saying Morales has not sufficiently cooperated with international anti-drug efforts.
“We’ve certified Bolivia twice before under the Morales government, even though they have taken a very different approach to counter drugs, especially to eradication, than previous governments,” Thomas Shannon, the top US diplomat for Latin America, said on Thursday.
“But what we’ve noticed over the past couple of months,” he said, “was a declining political willingness to cooperate, and then a very precise attempt by the part of some of the government ministries to begin to lower the level of cooperation and try to break the linkages” between US and Bolivian anti-drug efforts.
Washington did not cut off anti-narcotics aid, but the decertification prompted US President George W. Bush to recommend suspending Bolivia’s special exemption from US tariffs under an Andean-wide act that Congress has just renewed for another year.
Bolivian business leaders say that losing the tariff exemptions would cost South America’s poorest country up to 20,000 jobs.
Bolivia is the world’s third largest producer of coca — the base ingredient in cocaine — after Colombia and Peru. The Andean trade preferences have also benefited the latter two countries and Ecuador.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS