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02/08/04 : A declassified Pentagon report claims Uribe once worked for Pablo Escobar

In September 1991 the U.S. Department of Defense compiled a list of individuals believed to be associated with Colombia's notorious Medellin drug cartel. 

There are 106 names on the newly declassified intelligence document, and they read like a who's who of thugs, assassins, midlevel traffickers and crooked attorneys. The cartel's ruthless kingpin, Pablo Escobar, was prominent on the list, of course, along with the former Panamanian dictator Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. 

But the real head turner is item No. 82, which reads as follows: "Alvaro Uribe Velez—a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the U.S.... Uribe has worked for the Medellin cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria."

The Pentagon report portrays Uribe in a light sharply at variance with his current image as Washington's main ally in the U.S.-financed war on drugs in South America. But in those days, he was among dozens of Colombian pols who openly opposed the extradition of their drug-trafficking countrymen. Uribe has since changed his views—and, in fact, his government has sent scores of drug traffickers to the United States for prosecution since he took office.

The report was obtained by the National Security Archive, a Washington-based nongovernmental research group. The identity of the document's author was removed by Pentagon censors. The detailed thumbnail descriptions of the Medellin cartel's associates suggest that the data came from Colombian or U.S. counter-narcotics officials, and the text states at the beginning that the report "forwards profiles on the more important narco-terrorists contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels." It is stamped CONFIDENTIAL NOFORN WNINTEL, meaning that its contents shouldn't be shared with foreign nationals. 

The U.S. ambassador to Colombia in 1991, Morris Busby, does not recall the document, and efforts to reach the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency liaison officer in Bogota in 1991, retired Army Col. James S. Roche Jr., failed to elicit a response. In a two-page written statement, the office of the Colombian president denied that Uribe had links of any kind to a business in the United States as asserted in the 1991 report. But the statement did not address the allegations that Uribe had worked for the Medellin cartel and was a close friend of Escobar, who was killed in a 1993 police raid.

30/07/04 : Three drug-linked rebel leaders flew out of their rural safe haven for an unprecedented address yesterday to Colombia's congress, trying to convince a skeptical country of their commitment to peace, despite persistent killings. Opposition legislators and critics condemned the government-backed trip, saying it bestowed political legitimacy on some of the worst killers and drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere. 

"In Colombia today, nothing is more urgent and pressing than opening paths of peace and reconciliation," Salvatore Mancuso, the supreme commander of the 13,000-strong United Self-Defence Forces, said in his speech. The group formally opened disarmament talks with the government this month. 

Mancuso and commanders Ramon Isaza and Ivan Roberto Duque all shed their camouflage fatigues for dark suits and ties before boarding an air force plane to fly from their northwestern stronghold to Bogota. They were greeted by a massive police escort. 

President Alvaro Uribe granted the men a two-day safe conduct pass, giving them immunity from arrest for their alleged roles in human rights abuses committed during their two-decade dirty war against Marxist rebels. 

Mancuso defended the USDF, calling his fighters "heroes" who for years protected the Colombian people from guerrilla attacks in the absence of state authority. 

He offered no apology for the thousands of victims of paramilitary violence but said USDF commanders were discussing compensation. 

Washington has issued an extradition order against Mancuso on cocaine smuggling charges, while Isaza and Duque both appear on a U.S. Treasury Department list of "significant" drug traffickers. 

Some 1,500 police and army troops, backed by bomb-sniffer dogs, took up positions in a wide area around the congressional building in downtown Bogota amid fears that rebels might try to launch an attack. 

Dozens of people protested the warlords' visit outside the congress, many wearing white skeleton masks to symbolize those killed by the paramilitary and chanting "never forget." 

The peace process "is a capitulation to impunity and injustice in Colombia," said Ivan Cepeda, whose father, former senator Manuel Cepeda, was slain in 1994. 

"What the process needs is for both sides to tell the truth, something they have not done," said independent Senator Carlos Moreno, accusing the paramilitaries of taking part in the talks only to avoid jail terms and extradition. 

Vice-President Francisco Santos, however, said the peace talks were necessary to remove a conflict that claims thousands of lives every year. 

"What we hope is that when this government's term ends (in 2006), they will have demobilized," Santos said. 

The congress is set to play a crucial role in the talks, however, as Uribe needs legislators to approve a bill that would give him the negotiating flexibility to offer USDF leaders an amnesty or reduced prison sentences in return for laying down their guns. 

Mancuso was also expected to use the trip to get a medical checkup, something he has been unable to do for several years while living as a fugitive.

29/07/04 : Marxist guerrillas freed a Roman Catholic bishop unharmed yesterday after an army operation cut them off from rebel commanders who had wanted to give him a message for the government, the bishop said.

Misael Vacca Ramirez, the bishop of Yopal, was released close to where he was taken hostage on Saturday in remote northeastern mountains.

"I was treated well. At no moment did anybody show me disrespect," Vacca Ramirez, 48, told reporters after stepping off a helicopter that had flown him out of the mountains about 120 miles northeast of Bogota.

He tearfully hugged relatives on the tarmac in Yopal and thanked the Colombian people for support during his kidnapping.

Vacca Ramirez said members of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, said they kidnapped him to give him a political message for authorities.

But the government army forced the kidnappers deep into the jungle, and they were cut off from a rebel commander who was to give him the statement, Vacca Ramirez said.

"So it turned into nothing more than a big scare for me," the bishop said.

Archbishop Luis Augusto Castro said the ELN rebels likely acted without orders from their command, taking top ELN leaders by surprise.

President Alvaro Uribe welcomed Vacca Ramirez's release, but called for hundreds of other hostages held by guerrillas for ransom or political reasons to be released.

Some 1,000 troops had embarked on a search-and-rescue operation in the jungle-covered mountains.

Vacca Ramirez has been involved in peace efforts between the government, leftist rebels, and right-wing paramilitary groups battling for control of the oil-rich Casanare and Boyaca regions

27/07/04 : A Colombian Roman Catholic bishop has been kidnapped by suspected rebels. 

Misael Vaca Ramirez, Bishop of Yopal, was seized north-east of Bogota by the National Liberation Army guerrilla group (ELN), church leaders said. 

A church official said the ELN had promised to release the bishop unharmed at an unspecified time, with a message for the authorities. 

Last month the government offered to stop operations against the ELN if the groups called a ceasefire. 

A church leader said he hoped the bishop would only be kept for a short time. 

ELN leaders have been trying to find common ground recently for peace talks with the government. 

The Marxist rebel group is thought to have up to 5,000 members. 

It is small in comparison with Colombia's most powerful rebels - the 15,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

22/07/04 : Veteran Colombian rebel Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, reported to be dying of prostate cancer, is in good health according to a top FARC rebel who also denied the group was in tactical retreat from the government's sustained military offensive.

Local media reports earlier this year that the 74-year-old leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was dying of cancer are false, said Raul Reyes, one of the seven-member governing secretariat of the 17,000-strong Marxist rebel army at war for 40 years.

"Commander Marulanda enjoys good health and continues to lead the FARC politically and militarily," Reyes said in a recent interview with Reuters at a hidden jungle camp, equipped with Internet and satellite television.

Reyes offered no proof but former peasant and career guerrilla Marulanda has been prematurely declared dead by reporters, soldiers or guerrilla deserters many times over the years.

The short, bearded Reyes, apparently in good health himself despite rumors he too was terminally ill with prostate cancer, said right-wing President Alvaro Uribe's military offensive against the FARC was doomed to fail.

"He hasn't understood the FARC is a political organization, with strength and experience, social and political reasons for its struggle, and for those reasons cannot be defeated," Reyes said.

'NO TACTICAL RETREAT'

Uribe, a firm U.S. ally, has boosted military spending and ordered the army to be more active against the FARC, leading to a big fall in violent deaths and kidnapping and helping lift his opinion poll approval rating to near 70 percent.

He has mobilized 15,000 troops to hunt FARC leaders in the jungles of southern Colombia. But while military activity and improved air power has stopped big guerrilla operations such as the attacks on villages of the late 1990s, the army has not won decisive victories.

Highway patrols have squeezed rebel finances by making mass kidnapping more difficult and government spraying campaigns have attacked cocaine crops they "tax."

But despite the year-old military offensive -- the biggest in years -- Reyes denied the FARC was in retreat and said it gained new recruits daily

"There is no tactical retreat. The FARC continues to fight where it wants."

He called Uribe "a failed president, who unfortunately persists with his obsession with war."

"The FARC is sure of the triumph it set out to obtain 40 years ago, the conquest of political power," Reyes said, dismissing polls that show the rebels have almost no popular backing.

"The FARC has enough support to move throughout the whole country."

Polls are mainly taken in cities, while FARC supporters are concentrated in the neglected countryside. About 60 percent of Colombians live in poverty.

PARAMILITARY PEACE TALKS A 'PANTOMIME'

Reyes called the government's peace talks with far-right paramilitaries -- which the FARC say cooperate with the military -- a "pantomime, a deceit."

Uribe, whose father was killed resisting kidnap by the FARC in the 1980s, was a fierce critic of peace talks with the rebels under the previous government.

Prospects of fresh talks seem remote. Uribe insists he will talk to any illegal armed group that calls a cease-fire. The FARC demands he withdraw the army from two southern provinces as a condition for negotiations, which it says must address social reform and not just war.

The FARC is concentrating on obtaining what it calls a "humanitarian exchange," to swap about 70 hostages for rebels in government jails.

But they refuse Uribe's demand that any prisoners released not rejoin guerrilla ranks. The hostages include three Americans -- Defense Department contractors captured in February 2003 -- and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen.

"From what other commanders tell me, the prisoners in their power are in good health," Reyes said, warning against a rescue attempt. "They could get caught in the cross fire."

FARC rebels killed 10 hostages, including a former defense minister, to prevent their rescue by in a botched army operation last year.

21/07/04 : Colombia's main guerrilla group rejected peace talks Monday as long as the government is led by hard-line President Alvaro Uribe.

"We're ready to undertake, with a new administration, the titanic task of building peace with social justice," commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said in a statement posted on their Website.

Uribe, who took office two years ago, has said he is willing to open peace talks with FARC provided the group first declares a unilateral ceasefire.

But FARC has threatened to continue its 40-year armed struggle to topple the government, prompting Uribe to order a major offensive.

On Monday, FARC branded the operation a failure.

"For a long time, President Uribe has tried to sell the illusion of the military defeating the guerrillas," the communique said.

Top military leaders, however, said FARC, with an estimated 16,000 fighters, will be forced to the negotiating table two years from now as a result of mounting losses on the battlefield.

Uribe's term as president ends in August 2006. Under Colombia's constitution, presidents are not allowed to seek re-election. But Uribe is trying to push through congress a bill that would allow him to seek a second term.

20/07/04 : WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, has denounced the country of Colombia for its military's practice to excuse many of their men from serving in the military while U.S. soldiers have been sent to the country to take up the slack.

Stupak, during debate on the 2005 Foreign Operations spending bill, said this policy of excusing the sons and daughters of their elite has been in place since the beginning of Colombia's 40-year civil war. Colombian law excludes military draftees who are high school graduates from serving in combat units.

"If the elite, educated Colombians won't send their sons and daughters to fight in their own civil war, why should American troops be sent to Colombia in their place?" said Stupak. "Every year the Colombians tell us that this issue is being addressed, but over and over again the fact remains -- it has not been."

"Meanwhile," Stupak said, "the administration wants to increase U.S. troops to Colombia from 400 to 800.

"Instead, Colombia needs to change its laws to do away with existing discriminatory practices and create a universal military service obligation without distinction for economic, social or academic conditions," Stupak said. "This is yet another reason why the U.S. should not be sending additional troops to Colombia.

"Our military is already stretched thin with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush has implemented a stop-loss order to prevent active military and reservists from retiring and now they want to increase the number of troops we are sending to Colombia. It is just wrong," Stupak said.

Stupak and many other members of Congress have expressed concern with respect to a number of Colombia-related issues including the U.S. military's role, human rights, the aerial eradication of illicit drug crops, drug interdiction programs, the situation of U.S. hostages, and funding levels for Colombia, which have totaled more than $3.7 billion since 2000.

19/07/04 : Colombia's left-wing Farc rebels have freed the two sons of a former politician whom they kidnapped in a raid on an apartment building in 2001.

Jaime Losada confirmed his sons had been freed but said his wife, a senator, is still in rebel custody.

Rebels in police clothing had abducted them from their family home in the south-western city of Neiva.

Ransoms from abductions are - alongside the cocaine trade - a major source of income for the Colombian rebels.

The Farc is Colombia's largest rebel group and has been fighting for a socialist state for about four decades.

Shocking raid

Mr Losada, a former provincial governor and senator, told a local radio station: "I am half happy.

"I haven't seen my sons yet, but they're on their way, and I have to keep fighting to free my wife Gloria and thousands of other people who have been kidnapped in Colombia."

The rebels separated his sons from their mother six months after the abduction, the Associated Press reported.

The brothers, Sebastian Losada, 18, and Jaime Felipe, 20, are thought to have been freed in an undisclosed location in southern Colombia.

The Farc raid on the high-security apartment complex in Neiva shocked many urban Colombians as it brought to their doorstep a conflict largely associated with the impoverished peasantry.

12/07/04 : According to the UN, there are up to three million internally displaced people in Colombia, making it the worst humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees concedes that the rate of displacement has fallen. 

This is partly because the army has been moving in to former rebel strongholds, but also because some of Colombia's armed factions now have an active policy of preventing would-be refugees from leaving their homes. 

Left-wing guerrillas have been fighting the state for 40 years 
But the commissioner warns that every day up to 500 people join the growing ranks of Colombia's internally displaced. The situation is so grave, the UN says, that only Sudan and Congo are blighted by worse humanitarian crises. 

Human rights groups reckon that even if the army were to completely vanquish the Farc, and end the violence that has plagued Colombia for some 40 years, it would take at least 15 years for the problem of internal displacement to subside. 

08/07/04 : Millions of people in the United States were moved by the story of Private Jessica Lynch, captured by Iraqi troops in March 2003. A few days after her liberation, Jessica Lynch would return to her home in West Virginia as a heroine and an icon of the U.S. battle for the liberation of the Iraqi people.

But in the United States, few people have heard of Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves or Keith Stansell (photo). These three U.S. citizens were captured some 16 months ago and have been held prisoner in the Colombian jungles by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels since then.

The relative anonymity of these three prisoners is no surprise. They were not active members of the U.S. military, but contractors working for two subsidiaries of Northrop Grumman, a private business that provides services to the U.S. State Department in the war against drugs in Colombia and in Afghanistan. Their small aircraft was brought down February 13, 2003 while flying over the province of Caquetá in southern Colombia.

"Contrast the impressive coverage that the media has given to the case of Jessica Lynch with the coverage of these three men in Colombia, who have spent months in captivity," says Peter Singer, analyst for the Brookings Institute think-tank and author of the book, Corporate Warriors. "This illustrates one of the clearest reasons why governments like to use private contractors, because when things go wrong, there are no headlines," explains Singer.... read the article :

05/07/04 : In December 2000, U.S.-trained counternarcotics battalions, U.S.-supplied Blackhawk helicopters and U.S.-piloted spray planes descended on Putumayo department to conduct Plan Colombia’s initial aerial fumigation campaign. 

In the more than three years since the initial spraying of coca crops, Putumayo has been a repeat target, as have many of the country’s other southern departments. Although the U.S. government claims its fumigation prescriptions finally began decreasing coca cultivation in 2002 and 2003, there is still no evidence that Plan Colombia has achieved its principal goal of dramatically reducing the flow of cocaine to the United States. 

But while Plan Colombia has failed to affect the price, purity and availability of cocaine in U.S. cities, its militarization of Putumayo has contributed significantly to increased oil exploration by multinational companies in this resource-rich region. Neoliberal economic reforms that constitute the economic component of Plan Colombia have further sweetened the pot for foreign oil companies.

03/07/04 : Disarmament talks between the Colombian government and right-wing warlords got off to a contentious start when paramilitary leaders insisted they shouldn't face jail time for their crimes.

``The peace process ends when we have all rejoined civil society under normal conditions,'' Salvatore Mancuso, the supreme commander of the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC, told a ceremony Thursday to formally open the talks in this traditional paramilitary stronghold.

The three-hour event was held under an open-air tent that provided little relief from the sweltering heat that grips Santa Fe de Ralito, the dusty cattle-ranching town playing host to the six-month process aimed at demobilizing some 12,000 fighters.

Peasants attracted by free food and cold sodas, however, largely filled the empty seats left by foreign diplomats and representatives of international organizations, who stayed away amid concern over the AUC's persistent involvement in drug trafficking and frequent violations of its unilaterally declared cease-fire.

In his speech, Mancuso also reiterated that his aim was to transform the paramilitary movement from an outlawed, anti-insurgency force blamed for some of Colombia's worst atrocities into a legitimate political organization.

Wearing a white open-neck shirt instead of his usual combat fatigues, Mancuso sat alongside nine other warlords who make up the AUC's high command, Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt and other government officials.

For Mancuso and the others, this was the first day in years that they were able to move in public without fear of arrest, after the government granted them immunity for the duration of the talks, provided they remain within the 240-square-mile safe haven around Santa Fe De Ralito.

But the path toward demobilization is fraught with obstacles, including deepening drug trafficking, persistent killings and kidnappings and little international involvement.

The most recent hurdle was cleared late Wednesday when former Sen. Jose Eduardo Gnecco was freed by paramilitary gunmen. President Alvaro Uribe had stripped two militia leaders of their immunity but restored it after the release.

Some 3,500 people are killed each year in the war, which pits leftist rebels against the paramilitary factions and government forces. The paramilitaries were started by wealthy ranchers in the 1980s to combat Marxist rebels.

The disarmament process came about largely due to Uribe's decision to boost military spending and wage all-out war on Colombia's two leftist rebel groups.

``The AUC agreed to a cease-fire, which was a condition for the start of the talks and that's why the government is here,'' Pretelt told reporter at the ceremony. ``I have a lot of faith in this process ... and I believe the paramilitaries are willing to make peace.''

The United States, however, has labeled the AUC a terrorist organization and most of the group's leaders, including Mancuso, are sought by the U.S. Justice Department on drug-related charges.

The key sticking point will likely be the fate of Mancuso and the other paramilitary leaders. Human rights groups say they must not be let off the hook.

``The Colombian government is sitting at the table with some of the worst war criminals in the Western Hemisphere,'' said Roxanna Altholz of the Washington-based Center for Justice and International Law. ``These people cannot be amnestied from human rights violations.''

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