Colombia seeks more U.S., European aid
Source: Reuters
(Adds details on U.S. delegation visit, paragraph 6)
By Patrick Markey
BOGOTA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Colombia will ask the United States and Europe this week for military cooperation and more economic aid to help consolidate gains against Marxist rebels and the cocaine trade, a top official said on Monday.
President Alvaro Uribe, Washington's staunchest South American ally, has reduced violence from Colombia's four-decade conflict by sending troops to retake areas under guerrilla control and demobilizing 31,000 rightist militia fighters accused of atrocities in a dirty war waged against the rebels.
Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said he will travel to Washington and Europe for talks on military assistance and funding to develop areas once held by armed groups and provide alternatives for farmers who grow coca -- the raw material used to make cocaine.
"We have recovered a good part of the national territory and now we have to consolidate the state presence in that territory and put more emphasis on the presence of government agencies involved in the social area," Santos told Reuters.
The close Uribe associate said he will travel to Washington and London, then to Brussels, Belgium, for talks with the European Union and to Munich, Germany, for a meeting of NATO defense ministers.
His trip came after a high-level delegation of U.S. officials, including U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, visited Colombia on Monday to bolster cooperation between Bogota and Washington.
MORE AID SOUGHT
Colombia plans to increase its troops and police on the ground to secure those areas where armed groups have been disarmed or driven back into jungles.
Washington provides Colombia with more than $650 million in mostly military aid each year -- totaling around $4 billion since 2000 -- while the European Union gives Bogota around $154 million annually, mostly for social development and programs.
"We are opening the way for Europe to help us, mostly in social areas, without discounting that they help us in the military sector too," Santos said.
Thousands still die or are forced from their homes every year by conflicts in the country. More than 600 police and troops were killed in combat last year while an average of three people are maimed by improvised guerrilla land mines every day.
Santos acknowledged that Iraq and Afghanistan had shifted U.S. attention away from Colombia, citing as one result difficulty in obtaining U.S.-made military helicopters he said were suited to Colombia's terrain.
Colombia remains the world's top cocaine producer despite Washington supplying millions in aid to fight traffickers and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, accused by U.S. and Colombian officials of using the drug trade to finance Latin America's longest insurgency.
The Andean country produces around 600 tonnes a year of the drug, most of which ends up on the streets of the United States and Europe.
Despite military gains made by Uribe, critics say he has not done enough to develop social projects in impoverished areas hardest hit by the conflict or to provide coca leaf cultivators with viable options to the illicit cash crop.
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