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  Powell To Show Support for Colombian President
Posted by FoM on September 10, 2001 at 08:24:57 PT
By Jonathan Wright 
Source: Reuters 

justice Secretary of State Colin Powell starts his first visit to Colombia on Tuesday to sound out President Andres Pastrana's ideas on peace with leftist rebels and war with cocaine and heroin traffickers.

For want of a perfect policy, Powell's support for Pastrana is not in doubt, despite setbacks on both fronts and signs that the rebels and the drug traffickers are working hand in hand.

U.S. officials say his main message will be that Washington is willing to stay the course with the beleaguered Colombian leader, with some adjustments to account for the events since President Bush took office in January.

By far the largest foreign donor to Pastrana's troubled Plan Colombia, the United States has spent more than $1 billion over the past two years to support Pastrana, much of it in the form of helicopters for the Colombian military.

But Washington has grown increasingly critical of the rebels and the way they have taken advantage of the territory which the government ceded to them in 1998.

In the meantime the Colombian government's program to spray coca and opium poppy plantations, with money and personnel from the United States, has had no detectable impact on the price and supply of drugs on the streets of U.S. cities.

On the contrary, the United States says the Marxist FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), safe in a demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland, has promoted the drug trade to finance its military operations.

U.S. officials say the Colombian military is no longer in dire straits and that the FARC have shown repeatedly that they are not serious about responding to Pastrana's overtures.

Military Offensive?

But they have been reluctant to draw what might seem to be the obvious conclusion -- that Pastrana should abandon the ''peace process'' and go on the offensive.

Colombian commanders and analysts say the army remains too weak anyway to compel the FARC to take peace talks seriously.

The State Department official in charge of Latin America said last week that Colombia could not overcome its multiple crises ``without a successful peace process''.

``It is possible to support the peace process and at the same time criticize one of the parties for abusing it and call upon that party (the FARC) to treat the process as a serious endeavor,'' added the official, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield.

One U.S. official said that the idea of giving more money to the Colombian military did surface from time to time in internal U.S. discussions but no one was in favor.

If anything, with the costly helicopters already in the pipeline, the emphasis is likely to shift to soft programs like economic development and crop substitution, he added.

Among options under consideration is training a new Colombian anti-narcotics battalion beyond the three that already have received instruction, or training an existing battalion in fighting drug trafficking, The Washington Post on Monday quoted senior U.S. officials as saying.

A final call about whether to step up U.S. military training would likely be made over the next four to six months, with an eye toward winning congressional approval for the funding for fiscal 2003, according to the Post.

The U.S. official told Reuters the United States took a long-term view of policy toward Colombia and was not about to change tack just because the first year or so was not a complete success.

Brownfield, briefing reporters on Saturday, said the results so far were in fact better than expected, with more than 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) of coca eradicated by spraying in the southern province of Putumayo alone and 35,000 farming families signed up for voluntary eradication.

U.N. Audit

But the United States appears to have underestimated the scale of the problem in the first place.

A U.N. audit has shown there were 163,000 hectares (403,000 acres) of coca in Colombia as of late last year, an increase of 2-3 percent from 1999 and significantly more than previous U.S. estimates of about 136,000 hectares (336,000 acres).

The Latin American country produces about 80 percent of the world's cocaine and is a leading supplier of heroin consumed in the United States.

Despite its reservations about the FARC's demilitarized zone, the United States has been careful not to put any public pressure on Pastrana to reconsider his policies.

``We acknowledge, we accept and we respect the sovereign authority of the government of Colombia to manage its own peace process,'' said Brownfield.

Pastrana has said that a decision not to renew the agreement on the FARC's territory, which expires on Oct. 7, would lead to all-out war and that he was confident that most Colombians would prefer to have peace.

Any shift toward an offensive risks dragging in the United States, which already supplies hundreds of civilian experts and advisers for the anti-drug program.

But Americans of many political persuasions are wary of engagement. Critics on the left say improvements in the Colombian military may have lulled people in Washington and Bogota into the belief that military victory is possible.

Powell will be the first U.S. secretary of state to stay the night in Bogota for many years. Apart from meeting Pastrana and other officials, he will see representatives of the human rights and alternative development organizations.

Source: Reuters
Author: Jonathan Wright
Published: Monday, September 10, 2001
Copyright: 2001 Reuters

Related Articles & Web Site:

Colombia Drug War News
http://freedomtoexhale.com/colombia.htm

U.S. Reassesses Colombia Aid
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10877.shtml

Colombia: Man Without a Plan
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10868.shtml

Powell Plans Reassurances Over US Aid
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10864.shtml


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