EL COMERCIO (Ecuador)

QUITO Why will there never be a coup d”état in the United States? “Because it doesn’t have an American embassy,” Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told Wikileak’s founder Julian Assange in an interview broadcast Tuesday on Russia Today.

The left-wing leader credited the joke to his Bolivian counterpart, Evo Morales. “I really love and admire the U.S. people,” Correa said. “The last thing I’d be is anti-American. But I’ll always call it like I see it. If there are U.S. policies that go against Latin America or Ecuador, I have to say something.”

El Comercio highlighted several other of President Correa’s more memorable comments:

On the subject of the U.S. military base in Manta, Ecuador, Correa said his government will be happy to renew America’s license to operate there “as soon as they give us permission to set up an Ecuadorian base in Miami.”

The Ecuadorian leader also spoke about his decision last year to expel U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges. “She was a woman who was totally adverse to our government, a woman from the far right who was stuck seeing things in a 1960s Cold War framework,” he said.

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