La Paz – President Evo Morales complained Wednesday of “aggression” on the part of the United States and vowed not to hand over equipment Washington that provided to a Bolivian counter-terrorism unit and now wants returned.
“I am receiving much aggression, much provocation from the United States Embassy – for that matter – from the government of the United States,” Morales said in a session with foreign reporters at the presidential palace.
Under a portrait of revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who was killed in Bolivia in 1967, the socialist president pleaded for “transparency,” “sincerity” and “responsibility” on the part of U.S. Ambassador David Greenlee.
Washington earmarked about $380,000 in aid for Bolivia’s FCTC counter-terrorism unit and has already delivered $70,000 worth of weapons and materiel, which the U.S. Embassy now says it wants returned.
Last Friday, the head of the U.S. military mission in Bolivia, Col. Daniel Barreto, informed Morales by letter that Washington was ending its relationship with the FCTC in response to a shake-up in the unit’s leadership.
The colonel also requested the return of the arms and equipment provided to the FCTC.
“Due to a recent change in the unit commander … the U.S. armed forces feel that our armies no longer share the same vision, making it necessary the de-certification of the Anti-Terrorist Force,” Barreto said in the missive, which was released this week by the Bolivian government.
Neither U.S. nor Bolivian officials have identified the officer whose appointment sparked the dispute.
“There is an instruction from the commander in chief of the armed forces to the military high command not to return any armament,” Morales said Wednesday, while leaving room for the possibility of responding favorably to a formal diplomat request from Washington.
He went on to say that his government will not “permit the permanent manipulation by the United States Embassy using some military officers, you can be sure.”
“Instead of asking for the return of the armament, (Washington) should rather give us back the missiles and not deactivate them,” the president said, alluding to last fall’s transfer to the U.S. military of surface-to-air rockets from Bolivian arsenals that were said to be dangerously degraded.
U.S. officials described that operation as part of a program sponsored by the Organization of American States to disarm obsolete ordnance, but some in Bolivia blasted the secrecy surrounding the transfer and suggested that the United States was really motivated by fear of Morales’ impending victory in the December election.
Morales is expected to meet this weekend with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while both are in Chile to attend the inauguration of Socialist Michelle Bachelet as that nation’s first woman president.
