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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Argentine Leader Slams U.S. 'Ignorance' |
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by Simon Gardner
(No verified email address) |
30 Jun 2002
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Embattled Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde hit out at the United States on Sunday, saying U.S. "ignorance" was his crisis-hit nation's biggest hurdle to securing vital aid. |
Duhalde, drafted in by Congress after the elected government fell amid deadly food riots in December, said Argentina was being discriminated against by a U.S. government more interested in keeping oil flowing from the Middle East.
"I think the biggest difficulty we face is the ignorance and lack of concern toward our region of the government of the United States," Duhalde told local daily Clarin.
"The North American's do not consider themselves responsible and are prioritizing conflicts in other parts of the world in which the flow of oil to the West is at stake," the president said.
"We suffer serious discrimination from the United States," Duhalde added, criticizing the U.S. among others for what he described as hypocritical protectionist policies in the agricultural sector, Argentina's main earner.
Already under pressure to call early elections, and with his popularity rating at just 8 percent in the polls, Duhalde desperately needs an IMF pact to help calm mounting social unrest.
It is a race against time. With half of the population living in poverty, unable to buy basic food and clothing, and 24 percent of the workforce out of a job, Argentina is a social pressure cooker.
Thousands of unemployed people and civil rights activists took to the streets in protest last week after violent clashes between demonstrators and police on the outskirts of the capital on Wednesday left two protesters dead.
However calm returned over the weekend, with the streets deserted on Sunday as Argentines turned their attention to Sunday's World Cup final.
The smallest of Argentina's three major unions on Sunday called for a mass protest for July 3 as a follow-up to a strike staged on Thursday to protest police repression blamed for the two picketer deaths.
The government is still wrangling with the IMF despite its pleas for the lender to bail it out of its spiraling crisis.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Horst Koehler announced on Friday the lender had entered "an active negotiating relationship" with Argentina, which Duhalde hopes will yield an aid deal to help end a grinding four-year recession.
But Koehler also said monetary policy was one of a series of remaining hurdles that must be cleared before it will consider fronting any aid for Argentina.
Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna said on Saturday he would not change his monetary and exchange rate policy, despite IMF calls for him to develop a monetary anchor to avoid a return to the hyperinflation of the late 1980s. |
