Bolivia announces expulsion of USAID

President Evo Morales today announced the expulsion of USAID from Bolivia, accusing the US development agency of meddling in the country's internal affairs in a new souring of often-tense relations.
The United States quickly dismissed the allegations as baseless, and said Bolivia's action showed it did not want good ties with Washington.
In a fiery speech to workers on May Day, the leftist president of South America's poorest country said the US Agency for International Development was in Bolivia "for political purposes, not social ones."
"No more USAID, which manipulates and uses our leaders," Morales said in the address in La Paz's Plaza de Armas.

He did not specify exactly how he felt the US agency was interfering in Bolivian affairs. USAID has operated in the Andean nation since 1964.
Morales, a populist and Bolivia's first indigenous president, has been in power since 2006 and has followed a sometimes nationalist agenda hostile to Western governments and companies.

In 2008 he expelled the US ambassador and agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing them of meddling in Bolivia's internal affairs.
Bolivia is a major producer of coca leaves, the raw material of cocaine.
During this previous crisis, the United States responded by expelling the Bolivian ambassador and ending trade privileges that it had granted Bolivia.

After a long period of frosty ties, the two countries in 2011 signed a framework agreement to normalise relations and exchange ambassadors again. But tensions remained.
"With the government of the United States we have profound differences of an ideological, cultural and, especially, policy-related nature," Morales told the La Paz diplomatic corps last year.
"I hope that with the new framework agreement we can improve things, but I doubt it," he said.
US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said today that all USAID had done in Bolivia was simply to try to help people live better. Washington deeply regrets the decision by Bolivia, he said.

"We deny the baseless allegations made by the Bolivian government," he added.
After five years of efforts to normalise relations after the 2008 crisis, he said, "this action is a further demonstration that the Bolivian government is not interested in that vision."
The new US Secretary of State John Kerry had encouraged improved relations with Bolivia.