Colombian "para-political" scandal may hurt trade
Source: Reuters
(Adds quotes from Colombian foreign minister, US lawmaker) By Hugh Bronstein BOGOTA, Feb 16 (Reuters) - A scandal over suspected Colombian government links to illegal right-wing militias could hamper President Alvaro Uribe's bid to clinch a free-trade deal with the United States. Sen. Alvaro Araujo, the brother of Colombia's foreign minister, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of financing drug-running paramilitaries who have committed atrocities in a the name of fighting leftist rebels. Araujo is in jail awaiting trial along with seven other members of Uribe's congressional coalition also accused of paramilitary links. Uribe wants to sign a free-trade deal with Washington. But Democrats newly in control of the U.S. Congress have said the Andean country must first improve its human rights record. "Every time something like this comes to light it confirms what people have suspected for a long time, that paramilitary influence has permeated Colombian society and politics. This does not help chances of passing a free-trade agreement," said Tim Rieser, an aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the subcommittee that funds foreign assistance programs. "On the other hand, the fact that the Colombian justice system is beginning to address this problem is very positive," he said. Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo, the sister of the arrested senator, said she will not resign despite opposition calls for her to do so. "This is a difficult moment," she told reporters. "But I am going to keep working." For years, the right-wing paramilitaries have boasted about their influence in Colombia's Congress. Sen. Araujo is the highest-profile politician to be arrested as part of the widening "para-political" scandal. "The larger issue is how does Colombia explain this to a Democratic (U.S.) Congress that is looking very hard at the free-trade deal," said Stephen Donehoo, Latin America expert at the Washington-based Kissinger McLarty Associates consultancy. More than 4,000 Colombian union leaders have been assassinated since 1986, according to the U.S. State Department. Families of the victims and human rights groups accuse the paramilitaries of being involved in many of the killings. "If links are proved between the paramilitaries and the labor killings, this political scandal makes passing the free-trade deal all the more difficult," Donehoo added. Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, chairman of the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said: "As a member of the new Democratic majority, I will be looking carefully to see whether the free trade agreement will contain basic protections for labor and the environment." The paramilitaries were organized as private militias in the 1980s to help protect private property from leftist rebels. Both groups, branded terrorists by Washington, fund themselves with Colombia's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade. Uribe is popular for cutting crime as part of his U.S.-backed crackdown on leftist rebels, who have decline to enter peace talks while more than 31,000 paramilitaries have turned in their arms in exchange for reduced jail sentences and other benefits.
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