Venezuela seeks arms edge over Colombia

[seemslikeadream]

By Andy Webb-Vidal in Caracas
Published: May 26 2004 0:00 | Last Updated: May 26 2004 0:00


Venezuela has embarked on a weapons procurement programme to gain the advantage in its military balance with neighbouring Colombia, edging the two countries towards an arms race.


General Jorge Garca Carneiro, Venezuela's defence minister, said on Monday he would unveil, in the next few days, an "integral national defence plan", including a strengthening of "operational capability".

But according to defence industry sources, President Hugo Chávez has in recent weeks initiated closely guarded plans to buy military equipment from suppliers in Europe and the Middle East.

Four European companies - Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and the UK - are competing in a tender for 200 armoured and tactical vehicles, in a deal estimated to be worth about $80m.


more
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1084907825252

[w4rma]

1. Who runs Colombia? (nt)

[seemslikeadream]

2. That's a difficult question for me

AP



In Europe, Ingrid Betancourt's captivity is seen as an indictment of Colombia's government. To Colombians, she is just one of many victims of a conflict that their president (see article) reckons he's winning

MARELBY AGATTÓN, who runs Colombia's Green Oxygen political movement, occupies a lonely cubicle in Bogotá surrounded by posters demanding the freeing of Ingrid Betancourt, the movement's kidnapped former presidential candidate. All of the posters are in French. In the local elections last October, Green Oxygen did poorly, electing only one mayor and ten councillors, although other leftish movements did well. Ms Agattón bemoans a lack of cash: Colombians haven't given a peso, so the movement relies on foreign donations.

Since her kidnap two years ago by the FARC guerrillas, Ms Betancourt has achieved mythical status in several European countries. There she is seen as a crusader for social justice against a corrupt and murderous political establishment—a Colombian Joan of Arc. In France, hundreds of town councils have adopted her as a “citizen of honour”, as have others in Belgium and half a dozen further countries. That is tribute to a superbly organised campaign, led by Juan Carlos Lecompte, Ms Betancourt's current husband, an advertising executive. It is also because of Ms Betancourt's prior links to France. Her first marriage was to a French diplomat (she has dual nationality). Dominique de Villepin, France's foreign minister, is a friend and former tutor. Her book (“Until Death do us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia”) is a bestseller in France.



Neither her book, nor her party, nor her crusade stirs Colombians in the same way. They see her not as a cause celèbre, but as a failed, minor politician, and only one among hundreds of kidnap victims being held by the FARC. The special attention she receives abroad provokes irritation. When María Jimena Duzán, a journalist, criticised Ms Betancourt's “deification” in a recent column in El Tiempo, Colombia's main daily, she received 400 e-mails, 70% of them in support. Ms Betancourt's book sold poorly in Colombia, wrote Ms Duzán, because it is “all lies” that make its author look good at the expense of Colombians. Far from being the country's only honest politician, she is herself a child of the establishment. She was never very radical, nor did she fight for the environment or against globalisation, as her supporters claim, wrote Ms Duzán.

Last year, Mr de Villepin organised a rescue attempt, sending a French plane and secret-service agents to the Brazilian jungle. He failed to tell either Brazil or Colombia. Now, Ms Betancourt's celebrity status has added to pressure on President Álvaro Uribe to negotiate a “humanitarian exchange” with the FARC.

more
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2518348

Colombia's politics


May 4th 2004
From Economist.com



Álvaro Uribe was elected president of Colombia in May 2002 and sworn into office amid tight security three months later. An independent Liberal with hardline views on law and order, Mr Uribe has taken a much tougher stance in fighting Colombia’s civil war than Andrés Pastrana, his Conservative predecessor. Mr Pastrana did repair relations with the United States and gained much-needed financial and military support. But he failed to make peace with Colombia's two main guerrilla groups and struggled to wipe out the coca cultivation that supports them.

Mr Ubribe, by contrast, has made inroads. He has pushed through reforms to cure the faltering economy and unleashed a massive and successful assault on the drug trade and the guerrillas that support it. The assumption of special powers has helped him, though some Colombians complain of heavy-handedness. The president's tough stance has also caused friction with his country's neighbours and Europe (particularly over Ingrid Betancourt's captivity). An attempt by Mr Uribe to turn his popularity into support for a referendum on political and fiscal reform backfired in October 2003, leaving the president's agenda in tatters. In response, Mr Uribe dramatically reshuffled his cabinet. A proposed amendment to Colombia's constitution to allow Mr Uribe to seek a second, consecutive, term should be rejected.

http://www.economist.com/world/la/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2518348


News Agency New Colombia
Associated member of FELAP - Latin American Federation of Journalists
[e-mail] www.anncol.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MORE US SPECIAL FORCES ARRIVING IN COLOMBIA
US Special Forces are due to arrive in Colombia during this month to run training courses for two brigades of the Colombian army that are implicated in human rights violations. Their mission is to fight against left-wing rebels and protect an oil pipeline

06.10.2002 (By Alfredo Castro, ANNCOL Bogotá) According to General Galen Jackson, Director of Operations for US Army Southern Command, units of US Special Forces personnel have started to arrive in Colombia this week to give training to two Colombian army units. The US Congress is also due to hand over around $95 million to train and equip the two Colombian units and, after heavy lobbying by the manufacturers of the aircraft, helicopter gun-ships appear to be first on the shopping list.

The new training and equipment is aimed at increasing security for the Caño Limon oil pipeline that is owned and operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum – another company that lobbied hard for the aid package. The pipeline, which runs through north-eastern Colombia, is a regular target of leftwing rebels who object to Colombia’s oil wealth being expropriated by multinational corporations.

On Monday of this week the rebels attacked the pipeline in three different places and forced it to be shut down for the day whilst last year it was out of action for more than 170 days due to attacks. The newly trained units are expected to attempt and find the guerrilla units responsible as well as guard the pipe.

more
http://www.anncol.com/October_eng/0610_MORE%20US_SPECIAL_FORCES_ARRIVING_IN_COLOMBIA.htm


An oil refining town in central Colombia is watched over
by a wire sculpture called "The Christ of the Oil Fields."


The Forgotten War
For almost 40 years, Colombia has been torn apart by violence
Reporter: David Halton
Producer: Carmen Merrifield
Editor: Bob Schroeder
Sept. 24, 2002

There are conflicts that capture public attention and remain in the headlines for months or years. But one of the bloodiest civil wars, one right here in this hemisphere, rarely attracts that kind of notice. For almost 40 years, Colombia has been torn apart by violence. It's a conflict that pits right-wing paramilitary groups against left-wing guerrillas and the national army. Now the country has a new hard-line president.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cali is a city on edge in a country on edge. Police and bodyguards are on hair trigger alert. The F.A.R.C., the biggest of Colombia Marxist guerrilla armies has announced that every mayor in every town in the country will be killed unless they resign.


Juan Rodriguez, mayor of Cali
Cali's mayor, Juan Rodriguez, is defiant. He says he won't join the more than 100 mayors who have already resigned. The guards escorting him want to make sure he doesn't join the half a dozen mayors already murdered.

Like the majority of Colombians, Rodriguez is fed up with the F.A.R.C.'s intimidation and violence.

"Don't respect the civil life of our country. They don't have a single bit of human decency. They've become animals," he says (translated).



They are extreme words unleashed by extreme violence. In April, F.A.R.C. guerrillas in Cali disguised themselves as soldiers, entered the provincial assembly and kidnapped 12 of the elected members. People watched in horror as a real soldier came out, consumed with rage and grief after finding his commander badly wounded by the guerrillas.

A few kilometres away is the Cimitarra River and one of the
vast areas of Colombia where there's no army presence, no police
and no justice. Along one stretch of the river live 25,000
campesinos (above), whose poverty is typical of
Colombia's rural population.


The campesinos are forced to provide food for the
guerrillas (above), who are locked in almost constant
conflict with the paramilitaries.

Residents of Cali, Colombia.
more
http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/colombia/

[bemildred]

3. Colombia lacks internal cohesion at this point in time. nt

[AP]

4. It's sad the US is forcing them to spend money on this rather than on

schools and food.

But if it will protect democracy, it's an investment that will pay off for the poor in the long run.

[pescao]

5. perhaps the 'colombian officers' are less keen on a border war..

...in addition to a spiralling-out-of-control civil war, than the bushites and their regional manager uribe.

>Mr Chávez's government is also lobbying Spain to cancel a contract, signed by former prime minister Jose María Aznar, to supply Colombia with 43 AMX-30 tanks.

>The Uribe government has welcomed the Spanish offer as a politically symbolic sign that the military aid it receives to combat its domestic insurgency is not limited to the US but also comes from Europe.

>However, Colombian officers say the tanks - if delivered - will be ineffective for their war on guerrillas, and will likely be deployed on Colombia's border with Venezuela, inflaming tensions.

the irony of this is so appalling: as bolívar did before him, chávez sees venezuela & colombia as one country, part of the 'gran colombia'. one country = one army = end to war in the region. chávez is trying to bring peace to colombia (facilitating the release of hostages on both sides, welcoming colombian refugees, &c) whereas uribe is tring to bring war to venezuela. talk about black & white, the contrast couldn't be clearer. (btw as i understand it the so-called FARC are a bunch of rambo-mafia thugs, who actually drive people into the arms of the (far worse) paramilitaries for protection against the shake-downs of their financially-autonomous 'untis'.)

[bemildred]

6. That's an interesting point.

Several, actually. I had not considered the position of
the Colombian military in all this, I just assumed they were
all just corrupt SOA grads, and that is being unthinkingly
simple-minded. The tanks of course have little use other than
as a provocation or a money channel. I suppose you could
threaten campesinos with them, but you don't need more tanks
to do that.