-- [B] Ecuador's Noboa pledges "war" on Congress's far left -- By Felix Salmon, BridgeNews New York--Sept. 7--In his first presentation to foreign analysts and investors, Ecuadorean President Gustavo Noboa Wednesday pledged "war" on the far-left members of Congress who oppose reform. He also said he would set up an academic commission to act as a liaison between the government and Ecuador's indigenous population. * * * Noboa did not detail what he intended to do in Ecuador, but he was vehement in his opposition to the far-left members of Congress who oppose any of the International Monetary Fund-mandated plans to reform and modernize the country. "I am not going to be flexible" in negotiations with Congress, he said, adding, "We have an extreme left in Ecuador. They remain in the Jurassic Park. As long as I'm here I'm going to make war with the far left for modernization." Noboa also proposed an academic commission that would liaise between the government and the indigenous peoples who are protesting the latest reform bills. While admitting that "they have been marginalized for many years," Noboa also hit out at forged petition signatures Indigenous groups have presented to the government, and said that he found it difficult to take seriously some of the Indian nations that have as few as 80 members. Noboa, speaking at an Americas Society meeting in New York on the sidelines of the UN Millennium Summit, repeated his central bank's assertion that the Ecuadorean economy would grow 1.3% in 2000. He also rejected any proposals that Ecuador might apply for status as a highly indebted poor country, or HIPC, which would qualify it for official-sector debt relief. "Can anybody believe that we are poor when we have oil?" he asked. Noboa said he sympathized with opposition to dollarization among the rural classes. "It's painful, perhaps, not to have the sucre for the Ecuadoreans," he said. "They were used to having Ecuadorean heroes on the paper. For the Ecuadoreans, who is Franklin? Who is Grant? The poorest people could have more difficulty in accepting it." At one point, Noboa allowed himself an attack on the morals he saw in the United States and in the West. "We have people who steal cars, but we don't have 14-year-olds who kill their teachers," he said. "We have theft, we have muggings, but we don't have hundreds of thousands of children killed in their mothers' wombs in abortions." End (Back) to felixsalmon.com