Word: barco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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George Bush did not need to go to Colombia to boost his already stratospheric approval ratings. True, he wanted to show his support for Colombian President Virgilio Barco's war against his country's entrenched cocaine processors. He also had some serious fence mending to do with Latin leaders aggrieved by the Panama invasion. But while the Cartegena drop-by took place on foreign soil, it was designed for domestic consumption. For Bush to score points at home, all he had to do was go a few rounds on the Medellin cartel's turf and come back alive. His bold...
...angered by the Panama invasion was Peru's lame-duck President Alan Garcia Perez that he recalled his Ambassador to Washington and vowed not to attend the summit "as long as North American troops are illegally in Panama." After an appeal from Colombia's President Virgilio Barco Vargas, Garcia had a change of heart, and he now plans to be on hand in Cartagena. But tensions were further inflamed when in the heady days after Noriega's fall, the Pentagon clumsily leaked word of its plan to station an aircraft-carrier task force in international waters off Colombia's Caribbean...
...except for the soldiers stationed at the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, there will be no American troops left in the region after the U.S. completes the withdrawal of its invasion force from Panama, perhaps by the end of this month. Bush hopes that once those assurances are given, Barco will agree to the deployment of the antismuggling naval task force and the installation of a U.S.-built radar system that would be turned over to Colombia's antidrug forces...
...summit is set against the backdrop of a continuing hemispheric drug scourge that shows little sign of abating. Colombia's effort to rein in the drug lords has scored some successes. Barco told TIME, "The leadership of the drug cartels has received a major blow. A number of members of the cartels have been extradited to the U.S. to face trial. Their leaders are hiding and on the run." In the past twelve months, troops have confiscated more than 1 million gal. of precursor chemicals used in cocaine refinement and 32 tons of cocaine and coca paste, compared with...
...cocaine gangs have made peace offers before, but the Colombian , government has never bought them. The day after the Extraditables issued their statement through two kidnaping victims they had released, Barco's administration rejected the dope dealers' overture, telling them to save it for the judge...