Ex-Guerrilla Leads Colombia Opposition

[Judi Lynn]

Ex-Guerrilla Leads Colombia Opposition
By FRANK BAJAK
Associated Press Writer

February 20, 2007, 1:52 PM EST

~snip~
Petro, 46, is nevertheless turning up the heat on Uribe, claiming that the president's brother, Santiago Uribe, was personally involved in murders and forced disappearances while helping to form paramilitary groups in the 1990s.

The president was governor of Antioquia state at the time, and Petro alleges that he may have helped cover up his brother's crimes. He is calling for a debate on the matter in Congress next month.

"This case which was in the prosecutor's office of Antioquia, which Alvaro Uribe was governing, was shelved," Petro said. "And that's the president's defense today. But nobody is asking, was the case shelved at Uribe's behest?"

Incensed at these allegations -- for which Petro has yet to offer evidence -- the president took to the airwaves to deny the accusations and lash back.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022000689.html
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/02/20/ap3445549.html



Senator Gustavo Petro

[Judi Lynn]

1. Critics: Colombia Manipulates Crime Data

Critics: Colombia Manipulates Crime Data

Sunday February 18, 2007 3:46 AM


By DARCY CROWE

Associated Press Writer

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Critics say President Alvaro Uribe's government is manipulating statistics to make Colombia appear safer than it is, casting doubt on achievements that have made him popular both at home and with the U.S. government.

One of the leading critics is Cesar Caballero, who said he quit as director of the federal statistics office in 2004 because Uribe's office told him not to release a study that found sharply higher homicide rates in major Colombian cities.

``The president's policy is that you have to maintain the perception that security has improved, no matter what the case,'' Caballero said.
(snip)

Uribe's aggressive tactics to tame a five-decade-old, cocaine-fueled insurgency have made him one of the most popular presidents in recent Colombian history. He has boosted the ranks of the military and seized territory held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's biggest rebel group.

The Bush administration has cited a drastic drop in kidnappings to justify continuing some $700 million in annual aid for Colombia, mainly for its military.
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6423533,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Arrests of Lawmakers with Paramilitary Ties Rock Government
Constanza Vieira*

BOGOTA, Nov 17 (IPS) - The arrests of several Colombian lawmakers for their links to extreme-right paramilitary militias have given further credence to reports by human rights organisations "of how deeply embedded the paramilitaries are in the local and regional public institutions," Carlos Rodríguez, assistant director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), told IPS.

The Supreme Court has evidence that several ruling coalition legislators from the northwestern province of Sucre organised a death squad and actively took part in it, masterminded massacres of campesinos (peasant farmers) that led to the forced displacement of thousands of people, and influenced election results through the use of violence.

~snip~
"The president's silence on legislators from his movement who approve a law in the morning and order a massacre in the afternoon appalls us," Petro said Tuesday.

Rodríguez said Uribe's silence is "surprising and disturbing."
(snip/...)

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35525

[Judi Lynn]

2. Militias grab Colombia's best land

Militias grab Colombia's best land
By Frank Bajak, Associated Press Writer | January 27, 2007

SAN ONOFRE, Colombia --Much of the world has seen Colombia's heartbreaking civil conflict as a clash between illegal armies of the left and right, or a battle for control of the global cocaine industry. Tens of thousands have died.

But the real prize is land. Since the early 1990s, right-wing paramilitary militias have seized from peasant farmers an estimated 26,000 square miles -- an area larger than West Virginia that comprises about a quarter of the country's arable land, much of it sitting atop oil or valuable minerals.

The government of President Alvaro Uribe is now dismantling the paramilitaries and says it will force former militia bosses to surrender ill-gotten holdings. But promises aside, it is backing policies that mean most farmers will never get their property back.

The winners are Colombia's elite -- landowners, politicians and corporations who bankrolled the militias and used them to expand their holdings. The losers are people of humble means killed or forced at gunpoint to give up their land and join the hundreds of thousands displaced by the conflict.
(snip/...)

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2007/01/27/militias_grab_colombias_best_land/

[Judi Lynn]

3. Foreign minister of Colombia quits in scandal

Foreign minister of Colombia quits in scandal
By Simon Romero Published: February 20, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela: The foreign minister of Colombia resigned Monday as the government of President Álvaro Uribe, the Bush administration's closest ally in South America, struggled with a scandal that has disclosed ties between paramilitary cocaine-trafficking squads and some of Uribe's most prominent political supporters.

The resignation of Foreign Minister María Consuelo Araújo came days after Uribe expressed support for her. But fallout from the arrest last week of five politicians, including her brother, Senator Álvaro Araújo, on charges of working with paramilitary squads in a kidnapping case related to the scandal, made her presence in the cabinet untenable.

Hours after the resignation, the president appointed Fernando Araújo, who recently escaped after six years in rebel captivity, to replace Araújo. The two are not related.

President George W. Bush, who is scheduled to visit Colombia in March, has stood by Uribe, in part to counter the enhanced regional influence of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/20/america/web-0220colombia.php



María Consuelo Araújo