UNITED NATIONS, September 25 -- When Bolivian President Evo Morales appeared September 21 for the first of his two press conference at the UN, Inner City Press asked him about reductions in aid from the US.
Based on his answer, Inner City Press went later than day to the US Mission to the UN and asked State Department spokesman PJ Crowley about Morales' statement “that the U.S. and the Obama Administration has cut a lot of aid to Bolivia. He tied it to the failure to fall in line in Copenhagen and to a variety of issues.”
Pressed, Crowley answered that “we went through some restructuring of aid that was needed, where Bolivia did not qualify for certain kinds of aid based on conditions on the ground there. But we pledge to work with Libya to see if we couldn’t improve Bolivia’s track record to be able to qualify, once again, for some conditional aid that is provisional based on certain specifications and performances by the host country. So this is an issue that we’ve pledged to continue to work with Bolivia on.” (This is from the US transcript; the reference to Libya seems strange.)
But this happy talk on Bolivia was contradicted by Morales on September 24. Inner City Press went to his second press conference and conveyed what the US had said, asking for response. In Spanish, Morales totally disagreed.
Morales said that the US cut off funding under the Millennium Account -- but that Bolivia had turned to Brazil. He said that the US made tariffs on textiles less favorable -- but that Bolivia turned to Brazil, Argentina and “especially Venezuela," leader of the Grupo Alba. He denounced immunity for US diplomats, and said he had no regrets about expelling the US Ambassador from Bolivia.
