U.S. to Bolivians: Stop attacking ambassador

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

U.S. to Bolivians: Stop attacking ambassador
The State Department has complained to the Bolivian government about attacks on the U.S. ambassador.
Posted on Sat, Nov. 17, 2007
BY PABLO BACHELET
[e-mail]

WASHINGTON -- The State Department has lodged a forceful complaint to the Bolivian government, telling it to stop attacking the U.S. ambassador in La Paz. It's a shift away from the policy of mostly ignoring the heated anti-American declarations of Bolivian President Evo Morales.

State Department officials say the complaint was delivered Nov. 9, when Bolivia's ambassador to the United States, Gustavo Guzmán, was summoned to a meeting with the Western Hemisphere bureau's No. 2 diplomat, Craig Kelly.

Kelly told Guzmán the Bolivian government had to stop accusing the U.S. ambassador in La Paz, Philip Goldberg, of trying to destabilize the left-wing Bolivian government.
(snip)

The State Department initially hoped a private warning delivered by Kelly would be enough, according to a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he had not been cleared to brief the media about this.
(snip)

Morales had already threatened to eject Goldberg and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Juan Ramón Quintana, a top Morales aid, has said U.S. AID is running programs to help the opposition and may be ousted.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/311324.html

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May I please refresh your memory on the way the U.S. "helped" Bolivia during the reign of US-supported dictator Hugo Banzer:

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia

In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.
(snip)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

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It's a pattern with which they are all completely familiar by now.