La Paz – Venezuela’s aid to Bolivia will total some $2 billion and does not represent interference in the Andean nation’s internal affairs, Bolivian President Evo Morales said.
Morales discussed the aid issue Saturday amid criticism from Bolivia’s opposition that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was interfering in national affairs, the official Abi news agency reported.
He said last week’s visit to Bolivia by Chavez and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lague was merely a show of support for Latin American integration.
On Friday, Chavez and Morales signed 16 cooperation agreements during a meeting in this capital.
The agreements provide financial assistance to resource-rich but impoverished Bolivia in several areas.
The two presidents and Lage met in La Paz at the conclusion of a day in which they also addressed a crowd in the coca-growing region of Chapare, where Morales rose to prominence as leader of a powerful coca growers’ union.
Among the 16 cooperation agreements signed was one in which Venezuela committed to purchasing some $100 million in Bolivian government bonds and another forming an alliance between Bolivian state-owned energy firm YPFB and Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA.
The two companies will conduct joint energy exploration and production operations in Bolivia, which is home to some 52.3 trillion cubic feet of proven and potential natural gas reserves, second in South America to Venezuela.
Venezuela has pledged to invest some $1.5 billion long-term in Bolivia’s gas industry.
Morales, Chavez and Lage appeared at a rally in the town of Sinahota before tens of thousands of Indian peasants who cheered the leaders’ rhetorical broadsides at Washington.
Morales chose the town in the central province of Cochabamba to launch the campaign for July’s election of delegates to an assembly charged with overhauling the Andean nation’s constitution.
Lage traveled to Sinahota as the emissary of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom Morales considers a mentor along with Chavez.
Some 39 percent of Bolivians consider Venezuela their country’s best friend, according to poll results published Sunday by the La Razon newspaper.
When asked which country Bolivia should bolster its economic relations with, however, some 24 percent of respondents identified the United States.
Next on the list of desired trade partners were Brazil, with 16 percent, Venezuela, with 12 percent, Chile, with 10 percent, and Spain, with 9 percent.
The poll was prepared by the Apoyo, ap y Mercado firm in early May and surveyed citizens in the Andean nation’s largest cities.
