Colombia Paramilitary Chief Says Businesses Back Him
By REUTERS
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Sept. 6 -- The head of the outlawed
right-wing paramilitary forces, who has conceded that
most of his financing comes from the drug trade, said
today that he also received support from businesses.

The leader of the group, the United Self-Defense
Forces of Colombia, Carlos Castano, spoke of his ties
to businessmen in an open letter to Congress a day
after Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramírez had urged
lawmakers to investigate private financing sources for
the paramilitary militias that attack leftists and
suspected rebel sympathizers.

"Why shouldn't national and international companies
support us when they see their investments limited by
the terrorism and barbarity of the guerrillas?" Mr.
Castano asked in his letter. "The growing support of
the business sector is an urgent necessity in our
case. Either they defend themselves from our national
enemy or they will disappear."

Mocking Mr. Ramírez and his call for a crackdown on
people who secretly back the paramilitaries, Mr.
Castano said, "The crime of antisubversion or of
pro-capitalism" was something that could not exist in
a "civilized universe."

"We don't believe the country will advance toward
peace by pursuing businessmen, civic leaders and
defenseless citizens or by preventing them from
adopting an antisubversive stance," he said.

Local and international human rights groups said the
paramilitary group, which is responsible for many
peasant massacres and other abuses, operates with the
support of state security forces.

The government has been fighting an increasingly dirty
war with Marxist rebels that has taken more than
35,000 lives since 1990.

In a rare television interview in March, Mr. Castano
said that drug trafficking and drug traffickers
probably financed 70 percent of his organization's
operations.

He did not elaborate on his ties to businesses and
business leaders in his letter today.

But Mr. Castano and his private army, which is made up
of an estimated 5,000 mostly working-class fighters,
have long been seen as important defenders of the
economic and political interests of the conservative
financial elite.

"We have always proclaimed that we are the defenders
of business freedom and of the national and
international industrial sectors," Mr. Castano wrote.
"We have said over and over again that Colombian
subversives are preventing the adequate development of
productive forces."

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