U.S. Ambassador Denies Threatening

U.S. Ambassador Denies Threatening Ecuador Over Breast-Feeding Resolution

An American diplomat involved in an attempt by the Trump administration to stop the introduction of a breast-feeding resolution at a worldwide health conference this spring denied making threats to Ecuador, the country that originally sponsored the resolution.

In an interview, Todd C. Chapman, us ambassador to Ecuador said that allegations reported by The NY Times on July 8 that he threatened Ecuadorean officials with trade sanctions and withdrawal of some military assistance was “patently false and inaccurate.”

The article supported interviews with three Ecuadorean officials who declined to be named for fear of losing their jobs said that Mr. Chapman had made such threats in an attempt to urge the country to drop the resolution.

Before the publication of the article, us embassy in Quito declined two requests from the days to form Mr. Chapman available for an interview.

The State Department had also declined to comment, saying it couldn't discuss private diplomatic conversations.

In his recent interview with the days, Mr. Chapman said he was asked by the

Department of Health and Human Services, the agency leading the negotiations at the planet Health Assembly in Geneva, to satisfy with officials in Ecuador to boost concerns that H.H.S. had about the timing and the substance of the resolution that Ecuador wanted to introduce.

He said that in his meetings, with the Ecuadorean minister of health and therefore the acting Minister of foreign affairs, there was no mention of trade sanctions or military assistance.

“I didn't issue threats to the govt of Ecuador,” Mr. Chapman said.

Ecuador eventually withdrew the resolution, a nonbinding a document that emphasized the necessity to market breast-feeding and end “inappropriate marketing of foods for infants and young children” which may detract from breast-feeding.

Russia later introduced an identical measure and it had been approved during a slightly altered form that was supported by the us.

H.H.S. said that within the week before the planet Health Assembly, the department asked

Mr. Chapman to talk with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, because the American delegation was having difficulty getting Ecuadorean officials to satisfy with it.

The assembly, which is the decision-making body of the planet Health Organization had approved a breast-feeding resolution at its previous biannual meeting in 2016 after detailed and divisive negotiations, and therefore we didn't see the need for an additional resolution so soon, Mr. Chapman and H.H.S. officials said. The Americans also

worried that there would be insufficient time to debate the measure this year because Ecuador had deviated from international protocol by not raising the thought of a breastfeeding resolution until shortly before the assembly gathering, they said.

“The U.S. was deeply concerned with Ecuador’s approach,” said H.H.S. spokesman, Ryan Murphy.

Mr. Chapman said that in his discussions with the ministers, he read a diplomatic cable that H.H.S. sent him and conveyed the department’s concerns.

Soon after, Ecuadorean delegates met with American delegates in Geneva and agreed to drop the resolution.

Delegates who wanted a breast-feeding resolution then scrambled to seek out another sponsor, and Russia progressed to introduce the measure.

The Ecuadorean officials who were the sources of the Times’s the original article didn't answer requests to discuss Mr. Chapman’s statements to the days.

After the first article was published, the Ecuadorean government, a longtime advocate of international efforts to encourage breast-feeding, issued a press release saying it had not been pressured to drop the measure.