Uribe asks US not to punish Colombia
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Uribe asks US not to punish Colombia
By Benedict Mander in Bogotá, Financial Times
29 May 2007
President Alvaro Uribe has urged the US not to punish Colombia by denying it a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) or reducing military aid because of a deepening political scandal that is engulfing his government.
The so-called "para-politics" scandal, in which members of Mr Uribe’s government are accused of co-operating with rightwing militia groups, is undermining attempts to secure a FTA, which Democrats now dominating the US Congress are threatening to block over human rights concerns.
"It would be incomprehensible if Colombia were to be treated like a pariah, and denied a FTA with the US," said Mr Uribe in an interview with the Financial Times, insisting that Colombia has been a "loyal ally" of the US and that failure to secure a FTA would be "very serious".
A recent deal between the Bush administration and Congress to move ahead with bilateral trade deals with Peru and Panama, while leaving Colombia on hold, has angered Mr Uribe.
He argues that the increasingly serious allegations against members of his government - most recently implicating the vice-president and defence minister, and already leading to the resignation of the foreign minister earlier this year, and the arrest of 13 pro-government members of Congress - are the result of restoring peace to Colombia.
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"The vast majority of what is being denounced today happened before my government, and it is my government that is clearing all this up," said Mr Uribe, who is offering reduced jail sentences for crimes in return for revealing the truth of who else was involved. It is feared that as much as a third of Congress - all pro-government members - could be involved.
"The world should celebrate what is happening in Colombia," he said, explaining that since he was first elected in 2002 he had returned law and order to Colombia after over four decades of violence and instability. "Colombia has made a great sacrifice in eradicating drugs and defeating terrorism," he said.
"The Colombian state has been reborn," he said, since the demobilisation of most rightwing paramilitaries in 2005 and the retreat of leftwing guerrilla forces.
He is due to visit the US again in June after a previous visit earlier this month to lobby for a FTA, as well as to secure the renewal of the $700m in mostly military aid that Colombia receives each year. Congress wants to cut the proportion of aid allocated to military spending, while increasing economic assistance.
Colombia has received more than $5bn over the last seven years, making it the largest recipient of US aid outside the Middle East.
Mr Uribe also demanded greater support from the rest of the world to fight drugs. "There is no country in the world that has battled against drugs as much as Colombia," he said, urging other countries to co-operate more, particularly those in Europe, where he says demand is rising fastest.
As well as the threat posed by a failure to secure a FTA with the US, Mr Uribe admitted that the strength of Colombia’s currency was also damaging trade, after the peso appreciated by 30 per cent against the dollar in the last year, prompting the introduction of capital controls on May 6. "We need a competitive exchange rate. We are very worried by the appreciation of the peso - it could destroy jobs in Colombia," he said.
But his most immediate concern will be to mend the reputation of his government abroad, among US Democrats in particular - at home Mr Uribe maintains approval ratings of around 75 per cent.
So far Mr Uribe himself has remained free of any serious accusations, although many wonder how far the scandal could reach. "I have spent 30 years fighting crime in Colombia. I have suffered a great many attempts on my life for not giving in to criminal groups in Colombia... The only path of my security policy has been the institutional path," he said.
