Brazil said on Friday it recalled its ambassador from Quito after Ecuador contested a US$243 million loan it took from Brazil’s state-owned BNDES bank to build a power plant that broke down a year after it was completed.
“The government was very concerned over Ecuador’s decision ... [so] we are recalling our ambassador to Ecuador for consultations, and everybody who knows something about diplomacy knows what that means,” Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin told a press conference.
He said “eventually we will take other actions and we’ll review trade cooperation with Ecuador.”
It was the first time Brazil recalled an ambassador to a South American nation since the 1870 Triple Alliance war that pitted Brazil and Uruguay against Paraguay.
Quito’s foreign ministry issued a statement deploring Brazil’s decision and its “firm disposition” to maintain good relations with its neighbor, which, it added, the court action against BNDES should not affect in the least.
The diplomatic spat was triggered by Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s announcement on Thursday that he had taken the BNDES loan to the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris for arbitration.
Ecuador contends the US$243 million loan is no longer its responsibility since it was paid to Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht, which built the now defective San Francisco power plant.
Odebrecht was expelled from Ecuador after the plant broke down and Correa rescinded US$600 million worth of contracts he had signed with the firm. He also said he would sue Odebrecht for refusing to compensate Ecuador for contract violations.
BNDES issued a statement on Friday saying it had “rigorously complied with all requirements” in the contract on the plant.
It also said it was ready to “give all the technical support needed to legally defend [Brazil’s] national interests.”
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where
RSS