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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2006 
Fox Hopes Bolivia's Leader Can Combat Poverty
 E. Eduardo Castillo - Associated Press
| | Morales wept and bowed after he was presented with the yellow, red and green presidential sash. Outside, tens of thousands of people, led by brightly dressed Indians, cheered and blew on cow horns as fireworks crackled overhead. (Ricardo Mazalan/AP) |
Mexico City - President Vicente Fox said Monday that he hopes Bolivian President Evo Morales "gets it right" and can lift his South American country out of poverty.
"There is nothing more I could want with more fervor for Bolivia, the poorest country in the Americas next to Haiti," Fox said in an interview with the Mexican television network Televisa. "I hope he gets it right so it can leave poverty behind."
Fox added that Morales should use trade and the country's resources, particularly its energy resources, to combat poverty.
Fox's comments come the same day Morales appointed a Marxist journalist to drive Bolivia's energy policy. The appointment of Andres Soliz Rada as Minister of Hydrocarbons could signal a tough fight for multinational gas and oil companies operating in Bolivia.
A lawyer and former member of Congress who fiercely defended Bolivia's natural resources as a newspaper reporter, Soliz Rada will be in charge of renegotiating energy contracts so that Bolivia's state petroleum company has majority control and a significantly higher share of the profits.
Mexico has wanted to import natural gas from Bolivia for several years. On Monday, Fox said "we're going to do it with President Morales," adding it would benefit all.
The conservative Mexican president, however, recently angered the leftist Morales when he said in a radio interview that if Bolivia does not export its gas "they are going to consume it or they are going to eat it."
Morales responded by saying Fox "should not try to humiliate me and my people."
The pro-business Fox administration has since downplayed the bickering and said it is prepared to work closely with Morales.
In his Monday interview, Fox also disputed that Latin American governments are moving to the left, but warned that some leftist governments "frequently fall into demagogy, into populism and into policies that do not favor at all the poor."
Morales, who was sworn in Sunday, won the presidency by a landslide after promising to bring the poor Andean nation's natural resources under state control. |
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