Bolivian President Evo Morales on Thursday threatened to close the US embassy as leftist Latin American leaders joined him in blasting Europe and the US after his plane was rerouted over suspicions US fugitive Edward Snowden was aboard.
Morales, who has accused Washington of pressuring European nations to deny him their airspace, warned he would “study, if necessary, closing the US embassy in Bolivia.”
“We don’t need a US embassy in Bolivia,” he said. “My hand would not shake to close the US embassy. We have dignity, sovereignty. Without the US, we are better politically, democratically.”
Morales arrived home late on Wednesday after a long layover in Vienna.
He said his plane was forced to land there because it was barred from flying over four European nations over groundless rumors that Snowden was aboard, sparking outrage among Latin American leaders.
The Bolivian president’s air odyssey began hours after Morales declared in Moscow he would consider an asylum application from Snowden, who is holed up at a Moscow airport as he seeks to evade US espionage charges for revealing a vast Internet and telephone surveillance program.
In a show of support, the presidents of Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Suriname met with Morales in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba to discuss the incident.
They demanded that the four European countries — Spain, France, Italy and Portugal — explain their actions and apologize, saying that the treatment of Morales was an insult to Latin America as a whole.
The slight to Morales “offends not just the people of Bolivia, but all of our nations,” they said in a statement after the emergency meeting.
“The worst thing is that they are treating us like children rather than show humility and say ‘we made a mistake,’” Uruguayan President Jose Mugica said.
At a rally before the meeting, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro claimed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ordered the four European nations to deny access to Morales’ plane.
“A minister of one of these European governments personally told us by telephone that they were going to apologize because they were surprised, and that those who gave the order to aviation authorities in this country ... were the CIA,” he said.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said the leaders would “take decisions and show that we won’t accept this sort of humiliation against any country of [Latin] America.”
“Imagine if this happened to a European head of state, if this had happened to the president of the US. It probably would have been a casus belli, a case for war,” he said. “They think they can attack, crush, destroy international law.”
Correa had called for a larger summit gathering leaders of the Union of South American Nations, but the leaders of Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Peru did not attend, although they too condemned the incident.
In an implicit criticism of his absent peers, Correa said: “If what happened doesn’t justify a meeting of heads of state of our South America, what justifies one?”
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos voiced support for Morales, but warned on Twitter against “converting this into a diplomatic crisis between Latin America and the EU.”
Morales earlier urged Europeans to “free themselves from the US empire.”
The US consulate’s walls in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz were sprayed with red graffiti, one reading “Gringos Obama out,” while about 100 protesters burned flags and threw rocks at the French embassy in La Paz on Wednesday.
France has since apologized for temporarily refusing entry to Morales’ jet, with French President Francois Hollande saying there was “conflicting information” about the passengers.
The Bolivian government has lodged a complaint with the UN and said it planned another to the UN Human Rights Commission.
Russia has joined Latin American leaders in condemning European nations over the incident.
Whistle-blower Snowden, a former contractor with the secretive National Security Agency, is meanwhile thought to remain in legal limbo in an airport transit zone.
The 30-year-old has filed asylum requests in 21 countries, including several European and Latin American nations.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in