BELEN /Brazil/, August 8. /TASS/. The countries that belong to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), namely Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela and Colombia, should be wary of US attempts to strengthen its military presence in the region, Bolivian President Luis Arce said.
"Latin America and the Caribbean are among the national security priorities of the United States. That means that not only the State Department, but also the [US] Department of Defense is interested in establishing military bases in the region, and especially in the Amazon, which is something that we must pay close attention to," he said, speaking at the ACTO summit. In this regard, he cited the statements made by the head of the Southern Command of the US armed forces, Laura Richardson, who pointed to the great potential of the region, which is rich in minerals, especially lithium.
According to the Bolivian leader, the ACTO countries should be on guard about the intentions of European countries, which are also trying to gain control over the region, only through different methods. He also called for preventing external powers from exploiting the region and turning the Amazon into a foreign policy tool.
According to Arce, such a policy of "direct or indirect militarization" of the Amazon is being carried out in the interests of international capital. In this regard, he recalled that the exploitation of the region's resources by developed countries over the past century has destroyed "more than 100 ethnicities and cultures," and called the rate of deforestation in the Amazon's equatorial rainforests "frightening." According to him, to protect the region, it is crucial to preserve the ancient knowledge and way of life of the local populations.
The ACTO summit is being held in Belem, Brazil, on August 8-9. In addition to the countries of the region, representatives of the Amazon Fund's donor countries, as well as Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, which also have large areas of equatorial rainforest, have been invited to attend. On the eve of the summit, meetings of relevant ministers from the countries of the region and conferences of civil activists and environmentalists were held in Belen.