page_title: Lenín Moreno
section_title: Foreign policies
hierarchical_section_title: Lenín Moreno / Presidency of Ecuador / Foreign policies
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo holds a joint press conference with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, July 20, 2019. [State Department photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain]
context_page_description: Lenín Boltaire Moreno Garcés is an Ecuadorian politician who is the current President of Ecuador, in office since May 2017. Moreno was Vice President from 2007 to 2013, serving under President Rafael Correa.
  He was nominated as the candidate for Correa's PAIS Alliance, a centre-left, democratic socialist political party, in the 2017 presidential election and won a narrow victory in Ecuador's second round of voting on 2 April 2017. However, after his election Moreno drastically shifted his political stance, distancing himself from Correa's leftist legacy and making neoliberal changes to both domestic and foreign policy.
  Moreno was shot in 1998 in a robbery attempt and thereafter has used a wheelchair. For his advocacy for people with disabilities, he was nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. According to the New York Times, when he assumed office on 24 May 2017, Moreno became the world's only currently serving head of state to use a wheelchair.
context_section_description: Following a June 2018 visit by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who agreed with President Moreno to improve the US-Ecuador relations which were strained under the presidency of Rafael Correa, Ecuador launched a security effort with the United States, including buying weapons, radar sets, six helicopters and other equipment, as well as cooperation with the U.S. that would include training and intelligence sharing. Pence and Moreno also spoke about Julian Assange.
  In August 2018, Ecuador withdrew from ALBA, a regional bloc led by Venezuela and Cuba, in a bid to further distance itself from that country's socialist state and to be more “independent” of organizations that are trying to impose “specific views” on Latin America's social and political issues.
  In January 2019, Moreno supported Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó's claim to the Presidency of Venezuela, thus moving Ecuador away from its previous support of Nicolás Maduro.
  In early-2019 the IMF approved a $4.2bn loan for Ecuador.
  In April 2019 the World Bank approved the Social Safety Net Project for Ecuador.
  After imposing new restrictions on Julian Assange, who had been given political asylum in Ecuador's London embassy since 2012, on 11 April 2019, Ecuador revoked his asylum, with Moreno saying Ecuador had "reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange", allowing the Metropolitan Police to arrest him in the embassy.
  By mid-2019, he moved Ecuador's diplomatic position closer to the United States as he allowed the US to use an airbase on the Galápagos Islands.
caption: Moreno with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 20 July 2019
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