Bolivian vice president US uses aid to meddle

LA PAZ, Aug 26 (Reuters) Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said today US aid is being used to finance a think tank where opposition leaders are orchestrating a campaign against Evo Morales' leftist government.

Since taking office in January 2006, Morales, an Aymara Indian from a poor background, has aligned himself with fellow leftists Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

Garcia Linera said Washington was donating millions of dollars to create an ''ideological bunker'' for conservative politicians who oppose Morales' government.

Bolivian officials have accused the rightist opposition of trying to block some of Morales' key reforms, including a constitutional rewrite to empower the Andean country's Indian majority.

''I wish those 140 million dollars they are talking about was productive aid. There is some (US) aid that has a political aim ... (financing) the place where former ministers and deputy ministers meet, and from where they build an ideological and political resistance movement,'' Garcia Linera said in a radio interview.

A US Embassy spokesman refused to comment today, saying he had not heard Garcia Linera's statements.

Last week, US Ambassador Philip Goldberg said US aid in the 12 months to October would amount to 120 million dollars, not 140 million dollars, adding that a fourth of the money would go to fighting the drug trade in the world's No 3 cocaine-producing country.

''Aid that fosters political resistance is no good and is not welcome,'' Garcia Linera, a former leftist guerrilla fighter, told the state-run Red Patria Nueva radio network.

Currently, foreign governments can give aid directly to local and regional governments in Bolivia. The vice president said a new law is needed to monitor foreign aid more closely.

REUTERS AK BST0036