----- Original Message ----- From: Pakito Arriaran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 2:33 PM Subject: MLL: Weekly News Update on Colombia #531, 4/2/00 WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #531, APRIL 2, 2000 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *3. US HOUSE PASSES COLOMBIA "AID" On Mar. 30, the US House of Representatives voted 263 to 146 to approve a $12.7 billion emergency spending bill which includes some $1.7 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia, including funds for artilleried helicopters and aerial fumigation of the rainforest with defoliant chemicals. The votes were split across party lines, with 143 Republicans and 119 Democrats voting in favor, and 61 Republicans and 84 Democrats voting against. The two independents in Congress were also split, with Bernie Sanders (VT) voting against, and Virgil Goode (VA, formerly a Democrat) voting for the package. [New York Times 3/31/00] The night before the bill was passed, the House voted 239-186 to defeat an amendment that would have held up $522 million in military aid to Colombia while Congress reviewed the plan, but would have allowed the non-military portions of the aid to be disbursed. "We're being asked to enter into a huge new commitment to underwrite a war in Colombia," warned Rep. David Obey (D-WI), ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, who introduced the amendment. [Reuters 3/29/00] When it passed the bill, the House approved by voice vote an amendment to limit US military personnel sent to Colombia to 300 at any one time, unless more are needed for a rescue mission. The aid package must now pass the Senate, where some lawmakers are concerned that it has been bloated and contains too many non- emergency measures. The bill originally provided for $5.2 billion, but the House Appropriations Committee added about $3.8 billion before passing the package earlier on Mar. 9 [see Update #528], and another $4 billion in military spending was added on the night of Mar. 29. [NYT 3/31/00] *4. COLOMBIA: "DRUG WAR" POLL WAS FINANCED BY DEFENSE CONTRACTOR US Congress members pushing for the Colombia aid package used the argument of the "war on drugs" to pressure their colleagues. "I cannot believe any member is going to pull out the white flag and say we surrender on the war on drugs," said Porter Goss (R-FL). [Financial Times (London) 3/30/00] The Washington Times had suggested in a Feb. 9 editorial that the aid package was influenced by an opinion poll carried out by the Mellman Group, a polling firm linked to the Democratic Party, which showed that Democrats were seen as weak on the drug issue [see Update #524]. In its Apr. 3 edition, Newsweek revealed that the Mellman poll was commissioned by the defense contractor Lockheed Martin: "As the maker of P-3 radar planes used to track drug smugglers, the company had been pushing for heavy increases for drug interdiction. But Lockheed was facing resistance, especially from `liberal' Democrats on Capitol Hill, a company official says. Mellman's findings--based on telephone interviews with 800 registered voters--concluded that `56 percent' of the electorate would support a $2 billion increase in funding for "tracking planes to be flown in drug producing areas." The Newsweek article also reveals more about the campaign donations of two helicopter companies whose role in lobbying for the aid package was exposed in the Legal Times on Feb. 23: Textron, maker of the Bell Huey helicopter, and United Technologies Corp., whose Sikorsky Aircraft division makes the Black Hawk [see Update #526]. Federal election records show that the two companies donated $1.25 million to both the Republican and Democratic parties between 1997 and 1999. In 1999 United Technologies, which had previously favored gift-giving to Republicans, made what Newsweek calls "a strategic shift" and wrote four checks totaling $125,000 to various Democratic committees. Of the total, $75,000 was deposited in party accounts on one day, Dec. 31, 1999--11 days before the Colombia aid package was first announced. [Newsweek 4/3/00] In an opinion piece against the Colombia aid package published on Mar. 15 in Salon.com and the San Francisco Examiner, political columnist Arianna Huffington points to what she calls the "incestuous relationship between commerce and drug policy" evident in the Colombia aid debate. "Tom Umberg, the architect of the administration's Colombian initiative, is now moving from the White House Office of Drug Control Policy to the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, where he will represent Colombia and other Latin American countries on trade issues," Huffington notes. "[P]utting $1.7 billion into Colombia, in the middle of a civil war, is more than misguided--it's nuts," she concluded. [Salon.com 3/15/00; SFE 3/15/00] US Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-AL), who voted in favor of the Colombia aid package, has meanwhile ordered the suspension of almost $20 million in US aid to Ecuador to protest what he considers unjust treatment of Florida resident James Williams, who is serving an eight-year prison term in Ecuador on a 1998 money-laundering conviction. Williams waited more than two years for his trial and has now waited more than a year for his appeal to be heard by the Ecuadoran Supreme Court. Williams has also been charged with drug trafficking and money laundering in Florida; if released, he would face trial in the US. As the chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Callahan has the authority to discontinue aid programs. [Miami Herald 3/16/00 from wire services; El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 3/16/00 from AP; NYT 3/31/00] *5. COLOMBIAN COURT HALTS OIL DRILLING, U'WA LEADER CONFRONTS OXY On Mar. 30, a Colombian court ordered Occidental Petroleum Corp (Oxy) to halt all work on an oil drilling site located on land owned by the indigenous U'wa tribe. The announcement was made on Mar. 31 by Alberto Calderon, president of Colombia's state-owned oil company Ecopetrol; he said that the court injunction, if upheld on appeal, would halt Oxy's oil exploration project in the Samore block. Calderon said that the Bogota judge supported the U'wa tribe's claim that the drill site--while located just outside their official reservation--is part of their ancestral lands, and that drilling there would violate the indigenous community's "fundamental rights," including their right to life. Calderon said the government would appeal the ruling during the week of Apr. 3, on the grounds that it favors the U'wa over the general population of Colombia. [Reuters 3/31/00] Roberto Perez, president of the U'wa Traditional Authority, was in Washington when the news came down; he had arrived there on Mar. 27 to meet with US elected officials and Oxy investors. In a statement, Perez called the injunction "an important step," but emphasized that it only "speaks of the suspension of the project not cancellation," and said the struggle against the oil project will continue. [U'wa Defense Working Group Press Release 3/31/00] On Mar. 30, the same day the injunction was handed down, Perez confronted Oxy vice president Lawrence Meriage in the congressional office of Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), ranking member of the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. According to McKinney, Meriage had requested a meeting with her in apparent response to her remarks on Oxy's controversial oil project during the Mar. 29 house floor debate on the Colombia aid package. [Meriage has been lobbying for the aid package--see Update #525.] When Oxy officials arrived at McKinney's office on the morning of Mar. 30, they were surprised to find Perez and eight representatives of the U'wa Defense Working Group waiting there. During a one-hour meeting, McKinney asked Oxy pointed questions about the impacts of the oil project on the U'wa, and asked Perez to respond. According to the U'wa Defense Working Group, Meriage "admitted on record that the U'wa had not been consulted on the company's plans to drill the Gibraltar 1 oil well." This confession "gives strong credence to the ongoing legal challenges to Oxy's drilling permit in international and Colombian courts," says the Working Group, since "consultation with indigenous communities is a legal requirement both under the Colombian Constitution and under international conventions such as Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO)." "Oxy must immediately suspend their project pending a mediated settlement with the U'wa," said McKinney. "If any deaths occur in association with this project, the blood will be on Occidental's hands." Oxy began construction of the drill site in early February. Some 2,700 U'wa people and supporters have been protesting at the site since November in an attempt to block the operation. [U'wa Defense Working Group Press Release 3/30/00] *6. COLOMBIA: REBELS ATTACK PARAMILITARIES Aside from the US aid debate, one of the top stories of the week in Colombia was the dramatic Mar. 25 attack by leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on the small impoverished town of Vigia del Fuerte, in Antioquia department, and Bellavista, across the Atrato river in Choco department. After evacuating most of the civilians from Vigia del Fuerte, the rebels launched a full-scale assault on the police station and surrounding buildings, leaving the entire block demolished. According to press reports, eight civilians--including an elderly woman, two toddlers and the mayor of Vigia del Fuerte--and 21 police agents were killed in the assault. [El Colombiano (Medellin) 3/27/00, 3/28/00; FARC Communique 3/28/00] Government troops regained control of the area on the night of Mar. 26. [New York Times 3/28/00 from AP] In a Mar. 28 communique, the FARC's Jose Maria Cordoba bloc reported that 24 police agents were killed and three wounded in the attacks on the two towns; seven prisoners of war were taken; and five paramilitaries were killed, "among them the mayor of Vigia del Fuerte, Pastor Daniel Perezy, and his two bodyguards." The FARC said three of its own troops were killed and five wounded in the attack. The communique also claims the destruction of four police command posts, "including the mayor's offices which also served that function." [FARC Communique 3/28/00] "Here the only source of employment was the mayor's office, and now not even that's left," a resident identified as Joaquin told the Medellin daily El Colombiano. [EC 3/28/00] The Quibdo church parish condemned the guerrilla action, but confirmed the paramilitary presence, noting that the church had issued constant warnings about the presence of armed groups in the Atrato river area, and especially about an alleged paramilitary base located in Vigia del Fuerte, "since that activity put residents of the region at serious risk." [EC 3/30/00] According to El Colombiano, residents of the area had complained last year that paramilitaries from the Campesino Self- Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba (ACCU) maintained a checkpoint some 600 meters from the police station in Vigia del Fuerte. [EC 3/28/00] Army commander Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel and other officials were quick to jump on the propaganda value of the dramatic attack to suggest that peace talks under way between the government and the FARC in the southern area of Caguan are not working, and to criticize those who support the negotiations process. "All those who have gone to embrace [FARC founder and leader] Tirofijo in the Caguan, should go to Vigia del Fuerte to embrace those negritos," said Mora, referring to the primarily Afro-Colombian residents of the area with a term that most people would consider to be perjorative in the context. [EC 3/30/00] "This action is a response to the multiple crimes and offenses of the paramilitaries and their allies, the police of Vigia del Fuerte, against the defenseless civilian population of the Rio Atrato," said the FARC in its communique. "The state has never helped the thousands of local residents under attack by the paramilitaries, much less given any attention to the popular outcry demanding the lifting of the food and fuel blockade that the paramilitaries, the national navy and the police maintained jointly over the black communities of the Atrato and its tributaries," said the FARC. [FARC Communique 3/28/00] ======================================================================= Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139 http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * [EMAIL PROTECTED] ======================================================================= --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---