Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales will follow up his meeting with Cuban President Fidel Castro with a trip to Venezuela today to see leftist President Hugo Chavez, his spokesman, Alex Contreras, said.
But Morales starting his international travels with visits to Castro and Chavez, the region's fiercest critics of Washington, does not mean he is opposed to developing ties with the US, Contreras said on Sunday.
Morales, who will head to Europe later this week to start a world tour, would have gone to Washington had he been invited, Contreras added.
The leftist Bolivian leader's close ties with Castro and Chavez "do not aim at an axis of evil; rather, to an axis of good," the spokesman said.
In reaching out to Havana and Caracas, Contreras said, Morales was consolidating "diplomatic, bilateral relations of respect,'' not relations based on "imposition ... [or] conditions.''
Morales, who takes office on Jan. 22, has criticized Washington for trying to impose its will on Bolivia and other Latin American countries.
Contreras said Morales was prepared to talk with US officials as long as diplomatic conditions are different from what they have been before.
If that doesn't happen, "unfortunately, relations with the United States can deteriorate badly,'' he said.
Officials in Washington have expressed concern about the growing relationship between Morales, Chavez and Castro -- part of a Latin American tilt to the left.
They are also worried about Morales' opposition to US-led efforts to eradicate coca cultivation in his Andean nation.
Coca is used to make cocaine but also has traditional uses among Bolivia's Indians.
Morales has eased his anti-US rhetoric after winning the Dec. 18 election, saying that while he supports coca growing he opposes cocaine trafficking.
Morales plans to spend only about six hours in Venezuela's capital before starting a tour of several European countries, South Africa, China and Brazil, Contreras said.
His trip to Caracas comes at the invitation of Chavez, who called Morales while he was in Havana according to Contreras. Morales returned to Bolivia from Cuba on Saturday.
Contreras also said Morales, who flew to and from Havana on a plane sent by Castro, had declined an offer from Castro to use a Cuban government jet on his world tour.
"There is great concern, especially on the part of Fidel, over the question of the security of the president-elect,'' said the spokesman, who added that allies in Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party, or MAS, were also worried about his safety.
He declined to be more specific about possible threats to Morales, but MAS leaders consider the US government a likely eventual enemy of Morales because of his pro-coca stance and his ideological links to Caracas and Havana.
Morales had thanked Castro for the offer of the plane, Contreras said, but preferred to take commercial flights and rely on "the security of the people.''
From Caracas, the 46-year-old Morales will fly to Madrid for a meeting tomorrow with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Unlike his trip to Cuba, where he was accompanied by a party of 60, Morales will go to Venezuela and on the rest of the tour with a small party including his economic adviser Carlos Villegas.
Contreras said Chavez has already offered aid to Morales' government, including a program to provide identity documents to thousands of Bolivian peasants, with the goal of boosting suffrage in rural areas.
Chavez ``has offered to make available to Bolivia all the technology and human resources for such a plan,'' Contreras said.
The regime in Havana also plans to offer free eye operations to as many as to 50,000 poor Bolivians needing them, as well as 5,000 university scholarships for Bolivian students to study in Cuba.
From Spain, Morales will fly to France and Belgium, but a visit to Holland was canceled.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS