admin“Ecuador unilaterally and irrevocably renounces these preferential customs tariff rights,” Communications Minister Fernando Alvarado, said, reading from a government statement.
“Ecuador does not accept pressure or threats from anyone, and does not trade on principles or make them contingent on commercial interests, even if those interests are important .”
The government of president Rafael Correa said that while it had received the preferential rights in exchange for its co-operation in the war on drugs, they had become a “new instrument of blackmail.” The 30-year-old Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who embarrassed the government of US President Barack Obama by revealing details of vast Internet and phone surveillance programs, has requested asylum from Ecuador.
Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino has said it could take weeks to decide whether to grant asylum to Snowden, who remained yesterday in the transit area of a Moscow airport after fleeing Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa came up with scalding online remarks over criticism his country faced from the US press for potentially granting asylum to Snowden.
“They’ve managed to focus attention on Snowden and on the ‘wicked’ countries that ‘support’ him, making us forget the terrible things against the US people and the whole world that he denounced,” Correa said Wednesday in response to a Tuesday Washington Post editorial.
“The world order isn’t only unjust, it’s immoral,” Correa added.
The US newspaper accused Correa of adhering to double standards in the NSA leaker case, as Ecuador is considering harbouring Snowden from prosecution over US espionage charges.
It descried the Ecuadoran president as “the autocratic leader of a tiny, impoverished” country with an ambition to replace the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez as “the hemisphere’s preeminent anti-US demagogue”.
The Washington Post lashed out at a legislation recently adopted by Ecuador, saying that it diminishes freedom of press. — AFP/RT.
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