Iran Meets Bolivia, Agrees to Work Together

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Categorized | Featured, Global War

Iran Meets Bolivia, Agrees to Work Together

Posted on25 November 2009. Tags: bolivia, iran, la paz

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the midst of a three-nation tour of South America.

(CNN) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued his three-nation tour of Latin America on Tuesday, signing accords with Bolivian President Evo Morales and pledging mutual cooperation.

Morales met Ahmadinejad at the airport in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, where the controversial Iranian leader received a bouquet of roses from a young girl and military honors from the Presidential Red Battalion.

The two leaders then retired to the government palace, where they met privately. A large crowd gathered in the central Plaza Murillo, some of them holding up signs with Ahmadinejad’s photograph.

Among the day’s activities were the inauguration of three industrial facilities built with Iranian financing.

Ahmadinejad traveled from Brazil, where he met with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil on Monday. He left Bolivia on Tuesday afternoon for Venezuela to meet with leftist President Hugo Chavez, a strong ally.

Ahmadinejad already visited Gambia, on the African continent, and will stop in Senegal on his way back to Iran.

The Iranian president hopes to strengthen economic ties with the five countries. But, more significantly, he aims to bolster political ties with sympathetic governments as he tries to counter U.S. and European efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Morales and Chavez are strongly opposed to U.S. foreign policy, as is Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad also wants to improve Iran’s image after the brutal repression of demonstrators who objected to the outcome of the presidential election in June. Ahmadinejad was re-elected, but many Iranians believe the election was rigged.

Analysts don’t see much significance to Ahmadinejad’s visit to Bolivia, other than bolstering each country’s politics against the United States.

“The official agenda has nothing of substance,” said Jaime Aparicio, the Bolivian ambassador to the United States from 2000 to 2006.

“I don’t give it much importance,” said Rene Antonio Mayorga, a political scientist in La Paz.

Ahmadinejad’s visit to Bolivia really has to do more with Venezuela and its staunchly anti-American leader, the analysts say.

“Much of this points to President Chavez,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian political science professor at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

“Since Evo Morales doesn’t have independent politics, he is following in Chavez’s path,” Mayorga said. “This is a visit to demonstrate that Bolivia belongs to an anti-imperialist bloc and is opposed to U.S. foreign policy. More than that, I don’t see it.”

Bolivia and the United States have had diminished relations since September 2008, when each country expelled the other’s ambassador. Morales, a strong proponent of the cultivation of coca plants — the source of cocaine — expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration a month later. He also delivered a strong verbal criticism of the U.S. government at the United Nations General Assembly last year.

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