The head of the US Southern Command expressed concern about the “malignant activity of our adversaries” with lithium extraction.
MADRID, March 12
The Minister of Bolivian Hydrocarbons, Franklin Molina, criticized the recent statements of the head of the Southern Command of the US Armed Forces, Laura Richardson, who warned about the extraction of lithium in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile by their strategic rivals.
“This area is full of resources, and I am concerned about the malicious activity of our opponents who are seizing it, pretending to invest while actually extracting it,” Richardson said Wednesday in a speech to the House Armed Services Committee. Agents of the United States.
Molina laments that Richardson and his company “do not know the reality of Latin America, even to use such harsh terms as ‘diam'”.
“We do not have and do not accept any interference from any country in the world. Bolivia has a definition of the industrialization of natural resources (…). And here there is no consultation with the IMF or the World Bank or any of the North. Our country develops its own destiny. So, as We decided to be the leader of the republic, and we are the leader to choose to work with the one who leads us to the best conditions for the country”, Molina pointed out in his comments to BTV.
These proposals “show little analytical capacity, but at the same time little respect for the regions of the lithium triangle.” “There is complete ignorance of the importance of our continent in the development, today, in the strategic development at the global level, in the geopolitical energy environment,” he added.
Former Bolivian President Evo Morales also condemned Richardson’s words that Latin America is “not a colony” of the United States. “Let us reject the threats from the Head of the US Southern Command, Laura Richardson, who repeats her country’s predatory interests in the “lithium triangle” in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, water and oxygen from the Amazon and gold from Venezuela. It is not a US colony.”
