Ecuador: Oil, Indians and Debt

     The external debt is the reason the Ecuadorean
     government gives for why it "must" let oil
     companies exploit the petroleum resources of
     the rainforest.

-----Original Message-----
Ecuadorean Indians ask for cancellation of Ecuador's
external debt

The external debt is the reason the Ecuadorean government gives for why it
"must" let oil companies exploit the petroleum resources of the
rainforest.

QUITO, Sept 12 (AFP) - Ecuadoran Indians said Tuesday they were sending a
representative to a meeting of wealthy creditor nations in Paris to ask
that Ecuador's external debt be cancelled and converted to social aid.

Blanca Chancoso of the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities
of Ecuador (CONAIE) departed Tuesday for Paris, where Ecuadoran government
officials are to hold debt negotiations with members of the Paris Club on
Wednesday, CONAIE spokesman Mario Bustos told AFP.

The negotiations follow the replacement on Sunday of the beleaguered
116-year-old Ecuadoran sucre with the US dollar, at a rate of 25,000
sucres to the dollar, in a controversial move aimed at fixing Ecuador's
ailing economy.

Chancoso is to present an eight-page proposal to the Paris Club urging
"the canceling of all of Ecuador's external debt" in exchange for "a
commitment by Ecuadoran society to invest its equivalent in social and
cultural development and environmental conservation."

Ecuador owes one billion of its 14-billion-dollar external debt to Paris
Club member nations.

The document maintains that without a "substantial change" in economic
conditions, "a new period of tremendous social tension ill emerge and
endanger our fragile democracy."

It cites what it terms "the great guilt" of the country's successive
governments -- "above all, the elite" -- in creating the country's debt.

In January Ecuador's Quechua Indians, who make up approximately a third of
the population, staged massive, largely peaceful protests that toppled the
government of former president Jamil Mahuad and led to his replacement by
President Gustavo Noboa.