[progchat_action] Columbia's Uribe:"What, me worry?"
 
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:53:45 -0500 (CDT)



Uribe Defends Policy on Paramilitaries
as a Cousin Avoids Arrest

By Simon Romero
New York Times
April 23, 2008

Bogota, Colombia - His nation's trade deal with Washington is stalling. His
cousin is fighting arrest on possible links to paramilitary death squads.
Killings of union members continue. But when asked about his country's
challenges, President Alvaro Uribe points to progress in strengthening
democratic institutions and in giving economic growth a boost.

"Colombia is not in the time of crisis, but in the time of remedies," Mr.
Uribe said in an interview here Monday night at Casa de Nariqo, the
presidential palace. He cited a judiciary strong enough to investigate
widespread corruption, already resulting in the arrests of dozens of members
of the Colombian Congress and Mr. Uribe's former intelligence chief. "We
have almost doubled the budget of the justice administration," he noted.

On Tuesday an arrest order was issued for Mario Uribe, a second cousin and
confidant of the president and a former senator, on charges that he had met
with a warlord about electoral campaigns aimed at benefiting the
paramilitaries, groups responsible for some of the worst atrocities during
Colombia's long internal war.

In a move potentially embarrassing to the president, Mario Uribe sought
asylum in Costa Rica's embassy here, rather than surrendering for arrest.
Costa Rica denied his request late on Tuesday.

In the interview, President Uribe did not address his cousin's actions. But
he emphasized that there had been a sharp drop in murders and kidnappings
across Colombia since he took power in 2002, developments he attributed in
part to his government's demobilization of thousands of paramilitary
combatants.

Fears have emerged that the paramilitary forces, which had formed to battle
leftist guerrillas, are resurfacing in parts of Colombia with a focus on
drug trafficking and extortion. The resurgent groups are thought to be
responsible for a large part of the cocaine trade; Colombia still accounts
for about 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States.

But Mr. Uribe said his government had recovered "the monopoly of the state
to fight any illegal group," referring to these new armed groups as
"criminal gangs." Mr. Uribe, a lawyer who studied at Harvard and Oxford,
carefully enunciated his words in strongly accented English.

Despite the scandal that has crept into Congress, his cabinet and his own
family, Mr. Uribe remains widely popular here, with approval ratings above
80 percent. Many Colombians rallied around him after a diplomatic dispute in
March with Ecuador and Venezuela over Colombia's bombing raid of a Colombian
rebel camp in Ecuador.

Killings of trade union members in Colombia, though, have concerned some
officials in Washington, where the issue, combined with partisan
disagreements, has held up progress on a wide-reaching trade agreement.

When asked about the delays, Mr. Uribe, the Bush administration's top ally
in Latin America, chose his words with caution. "I have to be very prudent,"
he said.

"But we need the recognition of the progress Colombia has made," he said.
"We need association with the United States, not to hide our problems, but
to help us in solving them," he continued, citing the discovery of a union
killing in northern Colombia on Monday, a crime for which Mr. Uribe said he
was offering a reward of more than $40,000 to capture the perpetrators.

Even as Mr. Uribe's supporters are mounting an effort to amend the
Constitution to allow him to run for a third term, another scandal emerged
this week after a former member of Congress, Yidis Medina, said she had been
offered illegal patronage favors in exchange for supporting an amendment
that allowed Mr. Uribe to run for his second term, in 2006.

Adamantly denying the accusation, Mr. Uribe said, "My government recognizes
the right of political participation, never tolerates corruption."

He meandered into a discussion of the many challenges still facing Colombia
when asked if he would seek a third term, an issue that has divided the
country's political elite. He smiled widely when pressed on his response.
"In the long term, it is much better to have many leaders to usher the
torch," Mr. Uribe concluded.

Expressing disdain for the leftist guerrillas still at war with the
government, Mr. Uribe, whose father was reportedly killed by the rebels in a
botched kidnapping attempt, said he expected revelations to emerge of ties
between the rebels and some lawmakers in yet another facet of the
connections between Congress and illegal armed groups.

The situation in Congress is already strained, with dozens of members
vacating their seats because of the paramilitary scandal, and discussion of
legislation at a standstill. But the arrests are also a rare display of
institutional resilience, with few other countries in Latin America having a
judiciary powerful enough to pursue corruption on such a scale.

Mr. Uribe pointed to Colombia's other differences from some of its
neighbors, particularly Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, which are ruled by
leftist leaders with contrasting views on relations with the United States,
rules regarding foreign investment and the role of market forces in the
economy.

"We recognize we are some kind of exception in Latin America," he said,
explaining Colombia's openness to private investment from both domestic and
foreign sources. "Even with a great wealth in oil, in the long term it is
impossible to build social cohesion," he said in a subtle dig at the
socialist policies of President Hugo Chavez in oil-rich Venezuela, a leader
with whom Mr. Uribe has feuded in recent months.

In the interview, Mr. Uribe returned to the theme of democratic
institutions, which in his view make Colombia stand out in the region as a
partner for the United States, despite how some of these institutions have
been tarnished because of relationships in their ranks to warlords in the
country's internal war.

"Colombia has made decisions to overcome this long nightmare of violence,"
Mr. Uribe said, without suggesting that the end of the war was near. "In
Colombia, we have not insurgents against dictators," he said. "We have
terrorists against democracy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23colombia.html?_r=1&ref=am
ericas&oref=slogin

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