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Bush vows to sustain aid for Colombia drug war
04 Aug 2005 20:25:14 GMT
Source: Reuters
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By Patricia Wilson CRAWFORD, Texas, Aug 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush pledged on Thursday to sustain funding for Colombia's fight against drugs and violence even as a senior State Department official said Washington would like to reduce its anti-narcotics aid. As a close partner in the region, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe paid a coveted visit to the president's Texas ranch where the two leaders stood side by side on a barren patch of land outside Bush's new office under a blazing sun and declared themselves united in the war on terror. "We have made progress and we are winning, but we have not won yet," Uribe said. "We cannot leave this task half finished, we must take it all the way to the end." According to Colombian government figures, killings have declined by 34 percent and kidnappings by 56 percent since Uribe was elected in 2002. Uribe stressed the importance of continuing U.S. cooperation in the four-decades-old conflict with leftist rebels. The United States has provided more than $3 billion in assistance to Colombia over the past five years as part of an effort to wipe out cocaine and heroin production and crush the long-running leftist insurgency. A senior State Department official said the United States wanted to reduce its anti-narcotics aid for Bogota after its massive assistance program, Plan Colombia, lapses later this year. "We would like them to share more of the burden," said the official, who did not want to be identified because the governments had been discussing the assistance in private. Washington is waiting for Bogota to make a formal request for how much aid it needs following Plan Colombia, the official added. Critics say the Uribe administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year of U.S. aid largely on military hardware and beefing up the armed forces rather than tackling the problems that spawned the guerrilla movements. BACKING BOGOTA'S STRATEGY Bush said Bogota's strategy to reduce the illegal drug trade, revitalize Colombia's economy, strengthen its democratic institutions and improve the security of its people was working. "And we'll ask the Congress to sustain our commitment to follow-on programs for Plan Colombia so Colombia can build on its progress and win its war against the narcoterrorists," Bush told reporters before getting behind the wheel of his white pickup truck to give Uribe a tour of his 1,600-acre (650-hectare) ranch. Their meeting came in the same week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certified Colombia was respecting human rights and distancing itself from paramilitary groups sufficiently to allow U.S. aid to be given to its military. The decision means about $62 million can be handed over to Colombia as part of the U.S. government's budgets for the 2004 and 2005 fiscal years that run October to October. A quarter of U.S. aid for the Colombian military is conditioned on its human rights record. Each year, the United States has certified the funds can be handed over. Uribe said he and Bush discussed human rights "with great seriousness and with great respect." "I listened intensely and believe that he is interested in following through ... so that the world will hear loud and clear that Colombia is a nation of law and human rights and human dignity," Bush said. (Additional reporting by Saul Hudson)
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