AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
Friday, 25 February 2000
By Luis Torres de la Llosa
WASHINGTON-The Pentagon urged the US Congress Thursday to authorize a huge hike in military aid to Bogota, and advised against tying the aid to a requirement that the Colombian army break its ties with right-wing terrorist groups.
"I urge speedy approval of the Colombian supplemental," said General Charles Wilhelm, Commander in Chief of the US Southern Command, in a presentation to the Senate Appropriations Committee of Pentagon plans for the proposed 1.3 billion dollars in new aid.
Congress this year already approved 300 million dollars for Colombia, which receives more US military aid than any other country in the world except Israel and Egypt.
Of the additional 1.3 billion dollars-most of it military aid -- 900 million dollars would go to Bogota this year and 400 million dollars would go in 2001.
The Senate testimony came one day after the international watchdog group Human Rights Watch (HRW), issued a report documenting Colombian army ties with unofficial, right-wing paramilitary groups known for terrorizing and killing civilians in the war against leftist rebel groups.
"Evidence collected so far by HRW links half of Colombia's eighteen brigade level army units to paramilitary activity," said Robin Kirk, an HRW spokesperson who also testified Thursday before the Senate panel.
"It is crucial for the Congress to place strict conditions on all security assistance to Colombia, to ensure that the Colombian government severs links, at all levels, between the Colombian military and paramilitary groups," Kirk said.
But both the Colombian government and military responded to the report denying any links between the army and the paramilitaries.
US Assistant Secretary of Defense Brian Sheridan however warned the Senate panel against tying aid to human rights conditions.
"I am concerned that if extensive conditional clauses are included in the supplemental appropriations language, that we could inhibit or mitigate the overall effectiveness of US assistance to Colombia," Sheridan said.
"The targets (of the military aid) are the narcotraffickers. Only those armed elements that forcibly inhibit or confront these joint military and Colombian National Police operations will be engaged, be they narcotraffickers, insurgent organizations or paramilitaries," the assistant defense secretary said.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking at another press conference in Washington Thursday, said sufficient measures were already included in the supplemental aid legislation to assure that US aid does not go to human rights abusers.
"We have actually taken very specific steps in terms of the supplemental on this subject, which is that the military that is involved in providing the security for the police are new groups that in fact have been vetted, case-by-case, so as to be very clear about the fact that they, each individual, is clear of any human rights abuses," she said.
"I think that we have made very clear that our funding is dependent on the fact that it goes to these portions of the military that have been vetted," she said.
In Wilhelm's presentation to the Senate, he said he had become increasingly concerned that drug trafficking "and the other corrupting activities that it breeds" were "weakening the democracies in other nations in the region."
He said a substantial part of the new proposed funding would go to the development of a "forward operating location at Manta, Ecuador" to allow "the operational reach we need to cover all of Colombia and Peru and the coca cultivation areas of Bolivia."
Also, a "Colombian joint intelligence center" is to be further developed, he said. "This is, by every measurement, a regional problem and as such I think we must pursue regional solutions," he added.
©2000 Agence France Presse