Valparaiso, Chile – Cooperation against illegal drugs was one theme of a cordial first meeting between the top American diplomat and the flamboyant coca growers union boss who is Bolivia’s new democratically elected president, but Bolivian leader Evo Morales used the session to send another message to Washington.
Morales gave Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a traditional Bolivian Indian musical instrument called a charango that resembles a ukulele and is usually made from animal hide.
This one, however, was covered with bright green coca leaves.
Coca is the raw material for cocaine but also has traditional uses in Bolivia, where the leaf is brewed as tea, chewed and incorporated into ceremonies.
The gift was a reminder that coca and coca farming are legal in Bolivia, South America’s poorest nation.
Rice gamely strummed the instrument for a moment and posed with it for a Chilean television camera. U.S. officials were checking with Customs, but it’s not clear whether Rice can legally bring the instrument into the United States.
Rice and Morales were among dozens of leaders in this sunny port city for the historic inauguration of Chile’s first woman president, socialist pediatrician Michelle Bachelet.
Rice told Chile’s state television she expects U.S.-Chile relations will remain as close under Bachelet as they were under her predecessor and fellow Socialist, Ricardo Lagos.
Also on hand was the South American leader who most vexes Washington, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who gave the new Chilean president a kiss on the hand. He and Rice were seated far apart at the ceremony at the Chilean Congress building.
Rice and Bachelet met for the first time before the ceremony, but her get-acquainted session with Morales proved more interesting.
Morales campaigned with an anti-American edge, and has differed publicly with U.S. officials since taking office as Bolivia’s first Indian president in January. Last week he protested the withdrawal of counterterrorism aid in a standoff over the selection of one of his anti-terrorism commanders.
Morales, who once promised to be “Washington’s nightmare,” led the often-violent struggle against U.S.-backed coca eradication efforts over the past decade, and has promised to retool Bolivian coca policy.
The two discussed antidrug cooperation and trade, U.S. officials said afterward.
Morales has asked the United States to reconsider a proposed cut in anti-drug aid to Bolivia. President Bush’s latest budget request would reduce anti-narcotics funding to Bolivia to $67 million from $80 million.
He also wants the U.S. to enter into a “true” pact to fight drugs but has vowed his goal will be “zero cocaine,” not “zero coca.” “We don’t want the drug fight to be a political tool to defend geopolitical interests,” Morales said last month. “We don’t want a drug fight that is a pretext for the U.S. or other powers or governments … to simply control (Bolivia’s) government, blackmail or place conditions.” Bush also proposed cuts in anti-narcotics aid to most countries that make up the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, including Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela. Colombia is the only nation for which Bush has proposed a funding boost. U.S. funding for Bolivian anti-drug efforts has been declining since 2001, when it stood at $117 million.
But Morales’s comments suggested he believed the budget proposal was a reprisal against him and his opposition to coca eradication.
The U.S. ambassador in La Paz said the cut was due solely to revised budget priorities in Washington.
The United States has long been linked to the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile. He served as president until 1990.
President Nixon opposed the elected government of socialist Salvador Allende, and scholars have debated to what degree U.S.
officials provided at least indirect support for the coup.
Rice’s predecessor as secretary of state, Colin Powell, referred to the coup as “not a part of American history that we’re proud of,” though the State Department has said it did not instigate the coup.
The U.S. counted Chile under outgoing President Lagos as an example of a leftist government with which Washington enjoyed strong economic and political ties.
Bachelet was jailed and tortured under Pinochet. As head of the country’s defense ministry before her election, Bachelet is seen as having played a key role in reconciliation among Chileans after the close of the Pinochet era.
