Evo Morales' Plane Grounding Causes Uproar Throughout Latin America
Evo Morales' Plane Grounding Causes Uproar Throughout Latin America
AS/COA’s Christopher Sabatini describes President Evo Morales’ grounding incident a “huge waste of time” as other more important regional issues should call for Latin America’s attention.
The grounding of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane last week in Vienna continues to cause an uproar throughout the international community and has created a backlash over allegations that the United States ordered the move amid suspicions that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was on board.
The Organization of American States adopted a resolution Tuesday that condemned the incident and declared solidarity with Morales, who blamed Washington for pressuring European countries to refuse to allow his plane to fly through their airspace. Bolivia asked the OAS for the measure along with both Venezuela and Nicaragua, two nations that have offered Snowden asylum....
“It’s unfortunate what happened to Morales, but he very flippantly said he would give Snowden asylum,” said Chris Sabatini, the senior policy director at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. “A more polished leader or delegation wouldn’t do something like that.”
Sabatini called the whole incident “a huge waste of time” as there are a number of other issues more important to Latin American nations, such as the peace negotiations in Colombia and the NSA spying scandal that erupted over the weekend in Brazil.
Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that information released by Snowden showed Brazil and Colombia are top targets in Latin America for the NSA's massive intelligence-gathering effort aimed at monitoring communications around the world.
“Brazil and Colombia are responding to this situation in a much better way than other countries by approaching a much more serious problem,” Sabatini added.
Both Morales’ grounding and the NSA spying revelations have worsened relations between the U.S. and Latin America, which despite promises of improvement under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has remained stagnant....
