Bolivia has appointed the country’s first ambassador to the United States in eleven years, as the new interim government resets the country’s foreign policy after the departure of former President Evo Morales.
Walter Serrate Cuellar, the Latin American country’s former representative to the United Nations, has been given the key posting, filling a position left vacant since a diplomatic spat between La Paz and Washington in 2008.
The high-profile appointment, which has to be approved by the Senate controlled by Morales’ the Movement for Socialism party, comes as the interim government prepares to hold new elections that will exclude the former leftist leader.
Under Morales, Bolivia’s president for thirteen years, ties with the United States were tense, as the leader accused Washington of meddling in the mineral-rich country’s affairs.
Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, resigned on tenth November after the army backed protests that erupted against the disputed October twentieth election results.
The socialist leader fled to Mexico where he was granted political asylum.
Since then, the self-declared interim President Jeanine Anez, who has been recognized by the United States, has taken steps to rewrite Bolivia’s foreign policy.
Meanwhile, an anti-terrorism court in Dhaka has sentenced seven people to death in connection with a 2016 deadly siege of a popular cafe in the Bangladeshi capital.
One person was acquitted by the court, which delivered its verdict amid tight security.
Twenty-two people were killed after gunmen stormed the up Market Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s Gulshan area on July first, 2016, in an attack that drew global condemnation.
The victims included seventeen foreigners.
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