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Ecuador expels World Bank representative
AFP
QUITO
Petroleumworld.com 04 27 07President Rafael Correa has expelled the World Bank's representative from Ecuador, accusing the institution of attempting to extort him when he was economy minister in 2005, an official said Thursday.
An official letter of Correa's decision to throw out World Bank official Eduardo Somensatto of Brazil will be released by the foreign ministry, said a senior economy ministry official who requested anonymity.
The leftist president, in office since January, has charged that the global development lender suspended a 100-million-dollar loan for Ecuador in 2005 in retaliation for his reform of the country's oil sector.
"We will act accordingly in this case, not only by expelling the World Bank representative from the country but also by taking the appropriate international legal measures, because we are no one's colony," Correa, an economist by training, said April 21.
Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa was expected to address the issue, official sources told AFP.
The World Bank office spokeswoman in Quito, Paola Vallejo, declined to comment on the row, as did officials at the World Bank's Washington headquarters, even though the foreign ministry said it notified them both.
Somensatto was outside Quito when the notice was delivered, the foreign ministry said.
Correa had announced on three occasions since April 15 that Somensatto would soon be expelled in reprisal for the freezing of a 10-million-dollar World Bank credit while Correa was economy minister, in 2005, under president Alfredo Palacio.
Correa said the bank froze the credit to punish him for reforming the oil industry, and accused the multilateral lender of "extortion."
Correa's reform was designed to create an oil fund to buy back the Ecuador's sovereign foreign debt.
"When I became minister and turned out not to be a messenger boy for the World Bank, they held the check," Correa said.
"They messed us around for three months, and when I went to Washington, they told me that they did it because we reformed our law. That is, they punished a sovereign country for rewriting its own law," he said.
"Ecuador is a sovereign country and we will not stand for extortion from this international bureaucracy," said Correa.
Correa favors overturning the neoliberal economic policies of his predecessors and strengthening the role of the state in several sectors of the economy.
AFP 26 2236 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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