Ecuador`s Correa rebukes `intrusions` by UN, Americas court

Quito: Ecuador`s President Rafael Correa has rebuked requests by major international bodies for clarification on his anti-abortion position and decision to extract oil from an Amazon reserve. The president revealed that his government had received letters from the UN and Inter-American Court of Human Rights pressing him on the matters, which he says are domestic.

Speaking on his weekly radio and television program yesterday, Correa said the inter-American court had enquired into the government`s controversial plans to extract oil in Yasuni Park. The move is opposed by environmentalists and indigenous groups hoping to protect the UNESCO biosphere reserve. Correa also said that a UN rapporteur had sent him a request to explain his anti-abortion position. Last year Correa threatened to leave his majority-holding party if Congress decriminalised abortion in all cases of rape. "Gentlemen, go mind your business and not the affairs of a sovereign country like Ecuador," Correa said. He also pointed to what he said was interference by the UN`s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in Uruguay`s recent decision to regulate the production and sale of marijuana. The body has said Uruguay`s move breaks international law. But, Correa said, there was a lack of international criticism over legalised marijuana use in the United States where the states of Washington and Colorado have permitted citizens to use the drug recreationally. "It`s a terrible double standard; they treat us like colonies," the president, a leftist and economist by training, said. Her urged his countrymen to free themselves from "illegitimate and illegal intrusions by this international bureaucracy."