Bogota, Mar 09: Facing skeptics in the new Democratic-led US Congress, President Alvaro Uribe pleaded with the American public to continue a USD 700 million annual aid package that he credits for making his violence-tortured nation more peaceful and less corrupt.
"I ask the world, I ask the United States, to support us. We haven't yet won but we are winning. And we will persist," Uribe said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, three days before his friend and close ally President Bush arrives for a six-hour visit.
The Colombian law-and-order president is besieged by a political scandal in which eight close allies in Congress and his hand-picked former domestic intelligence chief have been jailed for allegedly colluding with right-wing militias in a reign of terror that nearly subverted Colombian democracy.
The scandal also prompted Uribe's foreign minister to resign last month when her brother — a senator — and father — a regional power broker — were implicated for alleged participation in the kidnapping of a political rival.
Asked if he did not know or was not able to measure the extent of paramilitary penetration in the Colombian state, Uribe responded emotionally, his voice rising.
"It's what we encountered. We are dismantling what we encountered. This was a country defeated by paramilitarism and (leftist) rebels," Uribe said.
Bush arrives Sunday for the first visit to the Colombian capital by a sitting US president since Ronald Reagan in 1982. Some 20,000 police and heavily armed troops will virtually shut off downtown Bogota to guard against a possible rebel attack.
But problems surfaced already Thursday when protests erupted against Bush as dozens of masked demonstrators lobbed rocks and homemade explosives at riot police on a university campus in Bogota.
The visit comes as many of the Democrats who won control of the US Congress in November elections are raising doubts about the effectiveness of nearly USD 4 billion (euro3 billion) in mostly military aid to Colombia since Uribe took office in 2002.
The Bush administration wants the Colombia aid package, which helped Uribe boost his security forces by a third, to continue in its present form.
But many Democrats express concern about Colombia's human rights record and want greater emphasis on social programs — the country has more than 3 million internally displaced — and on bolstering an overtaxed justice system.
Rep. James McGovern (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat from Massachusetts, said during a visit last week that he wants the US aid formula reversed from its current ratio of 80 percent military versus 20 percent social.
"I've been to places in Colombia where kids are so malnourished their hair is turning orange," he said. "I've been to places where the people can't get potable water."
There is scant evidence that the assistance has diminished drug trafficking: Colombia remains the source of more than 90 percent of the world's cocaine despite record aerial fumigation of coca crops. And the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has neither been defeated nor had any members of its leadership captured.
Uribe said, however, that US aid remains crucial in helping Colombia end a half-century of lawlessness and corruption. He said 50,000 fewer Colombians are now cultivating coca and that 520 suspects have been extradited to the United States to stand trial.
Skeptics should ask "what would have happened to our country without Plan Colombia. ... It would be an immense error, in an effort that is being won, to abandon it and leave it half accomplished," he added.
The paramilitaries, which gained control of the entire Caribbean coast during the past decade, demobilized two years ago under a peace pact with Uribe's government.
The paramilitaries arose in response to kidnappings and extortion by leftist rebels, who killed Uribe's rancher father in a 1983 abduction attempt.
Uribe said it's important to remember that the paramilitary terror followed 30 years of a plague by the FARC, which now sustains itself with drug trafficking, and other leftist rebel groups.
"These Marxist guerrillas fomented the combination of all forms of battle," he said. "They infiltrated politics. They infiltrated the universities. They infiltrated the labour movement. They infiltrated the peasants' movement. This is a truth that has not been shown."
Bureau Report