Reply #2: Face saving compromise

[rabs]

U.S. Ambassador Brownfield and Colombian Foreign Minister Bermudez signing the deal yesterday in Bogota. Many Colombians are outraged that the deal was rammed down their throats by the uribista regime.


Read in Colombian media that the compromise was that regular U.S. military personnel will have immunity. The "contractors" will NOT have immunity. Deal calls for 800 U.S. troops and 600 "contractors," i.e. mercenaries.

But Brownfield said in an interview this week that all U.S. personnel will "have immunity but not impunity." I am still puzzling about that.

There is a 45-page opinion by the Council of State that said the Colombian Congress had to review the accord before signature. But Uribe ignored it and the deal was signed yesterday behind closed doors. The Uribistas said the new accord was merely updating the previous 10-year deal reached under the Clinton administration to fight the drug war. It has now been extended to fight the "war on terrorism."

The accord will be sent to the U.S. House of Representative' and the Senate's foreign affairs committees, so expect there will be fireworks from Dems if the pact comes up for review.

A delegation from the ICC is scheduled to arrive in Bogota tomorrow (Sunday.) It will be investigating cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that have gone unpunished the past seven years. Colombia in 2002 got a seven-year moratoriun on investigating such crimes because at the time, the Uribe government and the FARC were negotiating a peace treaty. The talks, known as the Baguan talks, later collapsed.

The ICC investigating such crimes in Colombia is a HUGE embarrassment for the uribistas because it puts Colombia in the same category as Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Darfur as states where genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes have gone unpunished. (The U.S. is not a signatory of the 2002 Rome Statue (which created the court) so is therefore immune from investigations into war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

In theory, Uribe could be hauled before the court but that seems remote, unless some of the generals, senators and paramilitaries begin to sing and implicate him in the massacres etc. This also explains why Uribe is so desperate for another four-year presidential term.

Spoke to a Colombian friend last night and asked him if the bases accord and the arrival of the ICC were somehow related. He said the possibility had not occurred to him, but that it was an interesting question to investigate with his contacts back in Colombia.