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Newsbrief:
Some
Colombian
Terrorists
May
Be
More
Equal
Than
Others
1/17/03
Never one to miss an opportunity to rachet up war and talk of war, hardline Colombian President Álvaro Uribe asked the US government Wednesday to deploy a military force in Caribbean and Pacific waters around Colombia similar to the build-up the US is now undertaking near Iraq. Speaking in Quito, Ecuador, at the nomination of incoming Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez, Uribe continued his campaign to confound armed opposition to his regime with the global "war on terrorism" -- a campaign that has resonated with the Bush administration, which has labeled all parties to the ongoing Colombian civil war except the Colombian state as "terrorists." "I see that the conflict of the drug trade and terrorism in Colombia is more dangerous to the democratic stability of the continent in the medium- and long-term than the conflict with Iraq itself," Uribe said in remarks reprinted in El Tiempo (Bogota). "If you [the US] are sending to the Persian Gulf thousands and thousands of men and all that technology, then what you must do is continue with the same force and make the same decision about all the routes where the drug business is, where the money-laundering is, where the arms traffic is," he added. While the US and the democratic world are preoccupied with Iraq, said Uribe, "a greater problem of terrorism is growing, against Colombian democracy, against the continent, against the world, financed by drugs," Uribe warned. "This is a more serious menace than Iraq. Why do they not think of a similar operation to remove the drug traffic from the seas and skies? They need a real operation," he said, obliquely criticizing his US allies and financiers. "There is much talk, but little action."
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