La Paz – President Evo Morales expressed gratitude Monday to Jacques Chirac for the French leader’s public support of Bolivia’s move to assert control over its fossil fuel resources, while the Bolivian armed forces chief rejected claims that Washington is seeking to incite sedition among the officer corps.
In a wide-ranging address before the military high command on the occasion of the 185th anniversary of the presidential guard regiment, Morales noted Chirac’s recent positive comments about the Bolivian energy nationalization and the French president’s stated willingness to visit this Andean nation if invited.
“The president (Chirac), in his visit to Chile, has literally expressed that he supports the nationalization of the hydrocarbons,” Morales said.
He went on to publicly ask Chirac to attend the Aug. 6 opening of the constitutional assembly that is to revise Bolivia’s charter. Already committed to attending is Morales’ closest ally, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and the Bolivian has also invited Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and President Bush, among others.
“In this way, we hope that presidents of Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa can participate, because we are committing ourselves to a profound change in democracy and a change in a peaceful manner,” said Morales, a socialist sworn-in four months ago as his country’s first Indian president.
Last Friday in Santiago, Chirac said in response to a question about Morales that when he met the Bolivian leader during a recent Latin American-European summit in Vienna, “I felt I had in front of me a man who has restored honor to a people who had lost it for centuries and centuries.”
“Should he invite me to visit La Paz, I would go,” the French president said.
Two days earlier, in Brazil, Chirac said that the Bolivian government’s decision to take a controlling stake in all of the country’s oil and gas operations would result in more help for the Andean nation’s impoverished majority.
“What should be put in place – and what I understand is the idea – is that an agreement between the companies concerned for the sharing of profits should be more favorable to the public than is currently the case,” the Frenchman told the Brazilian television network Globo.
On May 1, Morales issued a decree giving foreign companies extracting natural gas in Bolivia 180 days to agree to new contracts giving state petroleum company YPFB majority shares in their operations.
Bolivian officials say the multinationals are welcome to stay, even assuring the firms that they will recoup their investment and earn a decent profit, but have made it clear the companies will not enjoy the kind of margins they did in the past.
The foreign firms with the largest concessions to extract Bolivia’s estimated 48 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are Brazilian state-owned giant Petrobras and Spain’s Repsol YPF, though French oil major Total also has a significant interest.
Chirac, a conservative, is the first non-left-leaning international figure to offer a favorable appraisal of Bolivia’s nationalization initiative.
In a related matter, Morales used his speech Monday to announce that the more than 3,000 troops he ordered to occupy oil and gas installations at the time of the nationalization decree are to return to their barracks.
He thanked the top brass for the armed forces’ role in asserting Bolivia’s control over the fossil fuel reserves, linking their participation in that effort with the record 75 percent approval rating the military received in a poll published last weekend.
“In these recent months, in recent days, to speak of the armed forces is also to speak of the change the national government is implementing, recovering the dignity of Bolivians,” Morales said.
During an impromptu press conference following the president’s address, the commander of Bolivia’s armed forces, Wilfredo Vargas, said in response to a reporter’s question that he knew of no attempts by the United States to recruit Bolivian officers for a plot against Morales, as claimed by Venezuela’s Chavez.
“Those eras of military coups have been left behind,” Vargas said, alluding to the more than 150 putsches Bolivia endured prior to the most recent restoration of democratic government in 1982.
