by the El Reportero’s news services
Daniel Ortega
Venezuela has promised to give Nicaragua $50 million to replace money that the United States said this week it would withhold from the Central American country, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said Saturday.
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega expressed disappointment in U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised the aid after Ortega learned that the United States was canceling $62 million of aid that was to have come from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S.-government-funded anti-poverty fund set up by former President George W. Bush.
Ortega expressed disappointment in President Barack Obama for the decision. “He expresses good will, but in practice, he has the same policies as President Reagan,” Ortega told a crowd of supporters in Managua’s Plaza of the Revolution.
In 1982, then-President Reagan supported funding the contras, the forces opposed to Ortega and his socialist Sandinista Party, which had come to power after overthrowing the U.S.- backed Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
Ortega called this week’s decision not to follow through on the payment “disrespectful.”
“The United States had given its word to the people of Nicaragua and in particular to the people of the cities involved in the program,” he said.
And he warned his U.S. counterpart that the world has changed since the United States funded the contras.
“He (Obama) is the first to know that the United States of today is not the United States of 20, 30, 40 years ago,” Ortega said. “Today, the United States cannot do whatever it wants in the world. It doesn’t have the moral force, even though it may have the material force to do it. They have even lost the support of the U.S. people.”
García’s development plans trigger bloody clashes in Peru’s Amazon
President Alan García is reeling from the worst outbreak of violence in Peru since he came to power in 2006. At least 33 people were killed on June 5, 24 of them police officers.
The death toll might suggest a violent clash between the police and Sendero Luminoso guerrillas, but in fact it was between police and indigenous protesters in the northern department of Amazonas. The government misjudged the strength of feeling against ten decrees opening up the area to private investment, which motivated the Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (Aidesep) to begin protest action two months ago.
Congress suspended the most controversial decree on June 10 in a bid to bring Aidesep to the negotiating table.
Jobim says Brazil must think big
Authorities prepared on July 11, to hand over wreckage from the crashed Air France fl ight 477 to French investigators in the north-eastern city of Recife Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said that the rescue operation had provided useful lessons for the country, among which he cited the need for additional modernization of the Brazilian Air Force and a second large naval base in the north of the country. Jobim is a prominent supporter of President Lula da Silva’s aspirations to turn Brazil into a major actor on the world stage, not only economically and politically, but also in terms of acquiring “major power” status.
A key component of the government’s new defense strategy is to resurrect Brazil’s national defense industry, gain important technology transfers from partners like France and ultimately achieve autonomy in the supply of defense equipment. (CNN and Latin News contributed to this report.)
