Bolivian President Evo Morales said that he and Brazil’s government are unhappy with Colombia withholding details regarding the military bases agreement with the United States.
Morales claimed that UNASUR member countries have still not been informed of the extent to which Colombia will allow the United States military access to seven Colombian army bases, as promised by Uribe on several occasions, including in August at the UNSAUR summit in Bariloche, Argentina.
“There are countries such as Brazil that are … very angry, I would say, because in some way some countries have been informed of the terms of the agreement,” President Morales said during a press conference in La Paz, reports newspaper El Tiempo.
He did not specify how he came to learn of the alleged anger of the Brazilian Government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which has supposedly arisen due to Alvaro Uribe’s withholding of details of the agreement from neighboring countries.
“Uribe has cheated me,” Morales said, a staunch critic, along with Venezuela and Ecuador, of Colombia’s pact with the United States. He added that Colombia had failed to fulfil its commitment to remit to UNASUR all military agreements signed by Bogota and Washington since the 1950s.
“Nothing has been revealed up until now,” Morales said, explaining that the offer had been made in early August in La Paz as part of President Uribe’s tour of various countries in the region in order to dispel concerns about the agreement. “What does the President of Colombia have to hide?”
News source CMI reported that Colombia’s government recently said that it could not share details of the agreement, as it is “subject to the consent of the United States.”