Word: pastrana
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...urging instead that the funding go to treatment programs and other schemes designed to reduce the demand for drugs in the U.S. Supporters of the package, including the Clinton administration and the House GOP leadership, insist that the legislation remains essential to save the beleaguered government of President Andres Pastrana against "narcoterrorists...
...Administration had cooled relations considerably with Colombia's previous President, Ernesto Samper, accused of taking $6 million in campaign contributions from narcotraffickers. But current President Andres Pastrana, who was elected in 1998, is considered a hero in Washington. Senior State Department aides began working with him last year to carve out a long-term aid deal and antidrug alliance...
There's just one problem: Pastrana is more popular on the Potomac than in Colombia, where unemployment is at 20% and the nation is enduring its worst recession in 70 years. According to a Human Rights Watch report released last week, the Colombian army is still fighting guerrillas with the help of some 5,000 paramilitary thugs "responsible for gross human-rights violations." Though the White House publicly insists its aid will fight drugs and not guerrillas, Clinton aides privately admit it will be impossible to separate the two in many future battles...
...Pastrana says the only way he can reverse the slide is with American aid, not only to fight drugs but also to shore up a crumbling economy and judicial system that has enabled the traffickers and guerrillas to flourish. "We know that we have to take difficult and unpopular measures," says Pastrana. That's good, because an awful lot ails his nation. The question will be whether Colombia--and the U.S.--can survive the cure...
...habit of corrupting Latin America's politics - and that could put Washington right back in the thick of the Reagan-era counterinsurgency from which President Clinton has tried so hard to distance himself. With a $1.6 billion U.S. aid package to the Colombian military at stake, President Andres Pastrana and U.S. drug czar General Barry McCaffrey found themselves forced Thursday to defend the Colombian army from allegations that it remains intimately connected with right-wing paramilitary groups notorious for human rights abuses. But despite Pastrana and McCaffrey's insistence that the military remains clean, Human Rights Watch reported Wednesday that...