La Paz, 2 sep (EFE).-Bolivian indigenous leaders began today to talk with five Ministers that President Evo Morales appointed to try to halt the March carrying ethnic groups between the Amazon and La Paz in opposition to the construction of a route that will pass through a park natural.
The meeting takes place at the headquarters of a public University in the Amazonian town of San Borja, where he arrived yesterday the March after touring in little more than two weeks about 230 kilometres from the city of Trinidad (northeast).
Before the meeting, the leader of the Confederation of peoples indigenous peoples of the East (Cidob), Ernesto Sánchez, explained in telephone contact with Efe that “going to engage in dialogue in the framework of the rule” and hoping that met the 16 demands raised by the ethnic groups, especially with regard to the road project.
Indigenous peoples demand the Government that the route does not pass through the territory IndÃgena Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (Tipnis) because they fear that the project lead to environmental damage and promote the invasion of colonists and producers of coca leaf
“The proposal is that first come five Ministers (…)” Tomorrow come five others and all agreements will be signed with President Morales, if it is to have the willingness to accept the 16 points that we have on the shelf. “If there is no will, the March will continue,” warned Sánchez.
The Ministers sent by Morales are those of the Presidency, Carlos Romero; public works, Wálter Delgadillo; of productive development, Teresa Morales; justice, Nilda Cup, and environment, Mabel monk.
Indians took advantage of the meeting to criticize Ministers for his constant attacks on the mobilization and demanded them are they sorry, above all by the instruction of Morales to their bases of peasants fall in that love to the indigenous people of the Amazon to convince them that already not it oppose the project.
“We are not any object or are they circumventing.” “We never thought that an indigenous President sneer so of us,” deplored a leader, not identified by the media, during the beginning of the debate.
One of the leaders reproached Morales to say that the indigenous peoples of lowland are minority, to assert that these “minorities gave the name of plurinational State to Bolivia”.
The Bolivian, Vice President Ãlvaro GarcÃa Linera, ratified today at a press conference that route must go through the Park because technically there is no alternative, as he emphasized moral in Eve.
The United Nations system in Bolivia called authorities and indigenous peoples “to make the greatest efforts and contribute his willingness” to engage in dialogue and find solutions.
UN also urged the Government to “move towards concerted solutions with the indigenous peoples affected” by the road project, “in the framework of the guarantee of the right to prior consultation” recognized by the Bolivian and international legislation. EFE
