Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Morales Charges U.S. Conspiracy to Force Bolivia onto Daylight Savings Time
President Evo Morales, equipped with a wall clock as a prop, charged Tuesday that the U.S. Embassy in La Paz is engaged in clandestine effort to coerce Bolivia to adopt Daylight Savings Time, moving the nation's clocks forward and backward an hour in coordination with the U.S.
To back his claim Morales released a set of intercepted e-mail messages between the Embassy and State Department officials in Washington.
"We have seen the government of the U.S. try to undermine our democracy, block us from the lawful export of coca products, and smuggle in munitions. But now we see that these conspirators also have their sights set on changing our clocks. We denounce this before the world community."
Morales also declared an Embassy clerical worker, Lindsey Phillips, to be persona-non-grata, making her the fourth Embassy official to be sent home by the Bolivian government. Citing the intercepted e-mails, Morales charged that Phillips was leading the effort to change his nation's clocks, and that she had "clear and ongoing contact" with regional opposition groups to gain their support to promote the plan.
Morales also charged that USIAD was using its funding to engineer support for the change from domestic political organizations, and demanded a full accounting from Embassy officials.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Susan Richards denied the charge. "The United States has always maintained that the decision of what time to keep is a sovereign one that must be made by each nation according to its own values."
She added that the latest charge by Morales seemed to be an attempt by the Bolivian government to distract public attention from recent charges of corruption against his administration, as well as a potential loss Wednesday by the Bolivian national soccer team in a World Cup qualifying match against Argentina. "The Morales government's proclivity to link these charges to key sporting events, unfortunately, is well-known."
More:
http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2009/04/morales-charges-us-conspiracy-to-force.htmlSo Bolivia won against Argentina 6-1.
Smooth move, "State Department spokeswoman Susan Richards." Keep on dishing out that clean, honorable, dignified diplomacy. :sarcasm: