Word: colombia
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...Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, the arrests last week of five senior senators allied to his government, on charges they colluded with feared right-wing paramilitary groups, could hardly have come at a worse time. There was obviously the embarrassment of seeing staunch supporters hauled off to jail for allegedly working with the same militias that have carried out some of the most grisly massacres of Colombia's interminable civil war. But the crisis also had an international dimension, not only because early next month Uribe is expecting a visit from President Bush - who considers the conservative Uribe...
...scandal comes just as Colombia has launched a campaign to drum up some $12 billion of support from the U.S. and Europe to finance a sequel to Plan Colombia, a controversial strategy to fight leftist rebels and drug trafficking. Under the first Plan Colombia, Bogota received more than $4.5 billion in the past six years from the United States in mostly military aid. An additional $1 billion came from donations from European nations which supported social programs and alternative development schemes to wean farmers off growing drug crops like coca. But support for that aid in the Democrat-dominated...
...Congress must also consider whether to ratify a free trade agreement signed between the Bush Administration and the Colombian government last year. Defense Minister Santos recently returned from a trip to Washington, London and Brussels where he presented Plan Colombia II. The the para-politica scandal, as it has come to be known, may still mean it will be a hard sell, said Santos, but the foreign minister's resignation "makes my job a bit easier...
...scandal is considered the most serious to hit drug- and violence-torn Colombia in more than a decade. It has been building for months since the Supreme Court opened investigations into allegations of close-knit relations between politicians and the paramilitary groups that have long controlled different areas of the country through murder and intimidation. So far eight federal lawmakers are behind bars awaiting prosecution. One senator, whose arrest warrant was issued along with Sen. Araujo's, is at large and believed to be in Germany. And even as the foreign minister was announcing her resignation, the Supreme Court, which...
...Colombia's paras were originally formed by wealthy cattle ranchers, business owners and drug mafias in the 1980s to fight off extortion and kidnapping by leftist guerrillas. The paramilitaries later turned into powerful armies heavily involved in drug trafficking and extortion themselves, and who used their power to control local politics, including prosecutors' offices and courts. The former chiefs of the militia groups, which demobilized as many as 30,000 troops in the past three years, are currently being prosecuted for their crimes under a controversial law that grants them reduced prison sentences of up to eight years for confessing...