Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for November 8, 2011
Newsline: Bolivia, US restore full diplomatic ties
Boliviaand the United States agreed Monday to restore full diplomatic ties three years after the Andean nation’s leftist government expelled the U.S. ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Administration for allegedly inciting the opposition. The two nations signed a joint framework agreement inWashington,D.C.that aU.S.official familiar with the document said seeks both to mend frayed relations and return ambassadors to the respective capitals as soon as possible. The document does not touch on whether U.S. drug agents can return to the world’s No. 3 cocaine-producing nation, theU.S.official said. But it does mention that ongoing U.S. cooperation will include assistance by the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity. Bolivian President Evo Morales has on various occasions, though without providing proof, accused USAID of inciting lowlands indigenous groups who have opposed some of his development plans. The joint statement said the agreement was signed in Washington, D.C., by Bolivian Deputy Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Alurralde and U.S. Undersecretary for Global Affairs Maria Otero. U.S. and Bolivian diplomats have been negotiating it since 2009, when Thomas Shannon was the top U.S. diplomat in the region. Morales expelled then-U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg in September 2008 for allegedly inciting pro-autonomy opposition leaders inBolivia’s eastern lowlands. Two months later, he kicked out U.S. drug agents, accusing them of similarly conspiring against his government. Washington continues to be without an ambassador in Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez is a close ally of Morales’ Bolivia.
Newsline: Nigeria dismisses US embassy’s hotel bomb warning
Nigeria’s national security adviser on Monday dismissed a weekend warning from the United States of an Islamist bomb threat to luxury hotels in the capital as “not news”, and said it was spreading unnecessary panic. The U.S. embassy warned its citizens on Sunday to avoid three hotels in Abuja, which it said could be targeted this week, after Islamist militants killed at least 65 people in coordinated gun and bomb attacks in the northern city of Damaturu on Friday. The attacks were the deadliest since Islamist sect Boko Haram launched an insurgency against the government in 2009. The group claimed responsibility for the violence that left bodies littering the streets and police stations in ruins. Witnesses reported gunfire in the city again on Monday, but military sources said it was from guards at the Yobe state governor’s house firing at a suspicious speeding car, and gave no further details. “The (U.S. statement) is eliciting unhealthy public anxiety and generating avoidable tension,” said Owoeye Andrew Azazi, Nigeria’s national security adviser.
http://af.reuters.com/article/nigeriaNews/idAFL6E7M736C20111107
Diplomatic Briefing 