New Ecuador president puts poor ahead of debt

QUITO, Ecuador – Rafael Correa vowed to put Ecuador’s poor ahead of foreign debt payments as he was sworn in as president on Monday, raising a sword given to him by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in a ceremony attended by members of the growing club of leftist Latin American leaders.

Correa, a charismatic political outsider who won a November runoff election, said he would work for an “economic revolution” in Ecuador that would emphasize the renegotiating of foreign debt, “paying only what we can after attending to the needs of the poor.”

His remarks drew applause from several U.S. antagonists who attended the ceremony – Chavez, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Iran’s hardline leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – as well as from Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and more moderate left-leaning leaders from Brazil, Chile, Peru.

Correa, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois, said the free-market policies promoted by Washington since the 1980s have failed to help Ecuador develop. He said some of the loans arranged by previous governments had been lost to corruption, and an international tribunal should be set up to decide what debt should be repaid.

During the campaign last fall, Correa threatened to cut ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and said he would not rule out a moratorium on foreign debt payments unless foreign bondholders agree to lower Ecuador’s debt service by half.

Correa has also rejected a free trade pact with the U.S., saying it would hurt Ecuador’s farmers. And he has said he will not extend the U.S. military’s use of the Manta air base on the Pacific coast for drug surveillance flights when a treaty expires in 2009.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who represented the U.S. at the inauguration, said Washington respected Correa’s decision to reject the free trade agreement, but hoped to continue “collaboration on matters of mutual interest in the future.”