Ecuadorian President Correa Gives VP Biden An Earful

On Friday, Ecuadorian President Rafael President Correa received a call from Vice President Biden about granting asylum status to classified data leaker Edward Snowden.

He said he had told the US vice-president: "Mr vice-president, thanks for calling. We hold the United States in high regard. We did not seek to be in this situation. Do not get the idea that we are anti-American, as some ill-spirited media outlets are doing."

If Mr Snowden ever came to "Ecuadoran soil" with his request, he added, "the first people whose opinion we will seek is that of the United States".

The Ecuadorian president, a leftist economist who received a doctorate in the US, denied he was seeking to disrupt relations and said he had "lived the happiest days of my life" in the US.

President Correa, addressed his nation about the conversation and did not let up one iota in his respectful-of-your-face description of how Ecuador will weigh Snowden's asylum request.

"We have to act very carefully but with courage, without contradicting our principles but with a lot of care, responsibility and respect of course towards the U.S. but also respect for the truth," Correa said.

Ouch. Biden was all 'please don't grant asylum' and then Correa was all 'we have to act with a lot of respect of course towards the U.S.' Things are getting hot while Correa rubs the U.S. face in it.

Then Correa again reiterated to the nation exactly where the United States could shove their free trade agreements with Ecuador.

"We need to be very realistic. We use the U.S. currency. We are extremely vulnerable. We shouldn't make any false assumptions," Correa said.

U.S. did you hear that? Somebody got told.

Correa did not let up and laid out exactly how this whole thing is going to go and exactly whose interests would be considered first and foremost.

Correa said that the first ones to be consulted "would be the U.S. as we did in the Assange case with England." He was referring to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who's been residing in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for almost a year.

Meanwhile Monday is just around the corner.

The most likely casualty of sheltering Mr. Snowden would be the trade preferences, which have been in place since the early 1990s. Originally designed for several Andean nations, Ecuador is the last remaining recipient. But the preferences, which applied to about $429 million in non-oil exports last year, expire at the end of July unless they are renewed by Congress.[...]

Ecuador has begun its own campaign to keep the preferences, including a Web site called Keep Trade Going, that urges Americans to contact their legislators to ask them to vote in favor of the pact.[...]

At the same time, Ecuador has staked out a fallback position, petitioning to include roses, frozen broccoli and canned artichokes in a separate trade program, the Generalized System of Preferences.* That decision is controlled by the White House, so Ecuador is essentially asking President Obama’s help in getting around opposition in Congress.

Mr. Obama must decide by Monday whether he will include those items — a move that becomes increasingly thorny as the standoff over Mr. Snowden continues.

*The Generalized System of Preferences, exists to boost the economies of developing nations. "President Barack Obama announced Thursday the suspension of [The Generalized System of Preferences] for Bangladesh because of concerns over labor rights and worker safety that intensified after hundreds died there in the global garment industry's worst accident."

http://www.usatoday.com/...