MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lagos to skip swearing in ceremony in Bolivia

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos has announced that he would not travel to Bolivia to attend presidential inauguration ceremonies because of a simmering internal conflict there over the Bolivian government's tentative plans to export natural gas to North America via Chile

Lagos said Saturday that it would be a distraction if he went to Bolivia, "because everything would revolve around the (gas exporting) project." Instead, he said, Interior Minister Jose Miguel Insulza would travel to Bolivia because he did not want to mix a diplomatic affair with an economic issue.

Later Sunday, the Bolivian Congress is to vote for a successor to outgoing President Jorge Quiroga from between the top two vote getters in the country's June 30 general elections, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Evo Morales. The swearing in ceremony is set for Tuesday. The Spanish-British Pacific liquefied natural gas (LNG) consortium, composed of Repsol-YPF, British Petroleum and British Gas, is waiting for a decision from the Bolivian government on whether it will choose a Peruvian or Chilean port to export the LNG to California and Mexico.

The gas-exporting consortium plans to invest $5 billion in the project. Consortium executives say that technically, Chilean ports would be more cost effective, that is, $600 million cheaper than the Peruvian ports, which are farther away from the gas fields in southeastern Bolivia.

But in June, the Bolivian Heritage Defense Committee gathered 60,000 signatures from citizens who oppose using a Chilean port to export natural gas to North America unless Chile returns sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean to Bolivia.

Enrique Mariaca, president of the committee that groups together diverse civil, labor union and university institutions said Bolivians are strongly opposed to shipping the country's resources through Chile.

Ever since Bolivia lost its access to the sea in the 1879 War of the Pacific with Chile, La Paz has centered it foreign policy on recovering its coastline.

In 1962, diplomatic relations between the neighboring South American nations were suspended because of the issue. According to Mariaca, this is an excellent time for Bolivia to negotiate recovering the sea access it lost in the war with Chile due to that country's interest in the gas and investment required for the project.