Pubdate: Mon, 25 Mar 2002
Source: Newsweek International
Issue: March 25, 2002
Copyright: 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/int/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/747

'I HAVE BEEN HONORABLE'

An Interview With Colombian Presidential Candidate Alvaro Uribe Velez

Alvaro Uribe Velez is a man with a short fuse. During an hourlong interview 
with NEWSWEEK's Joseph Contreras in a Bogota hotel suite, the 49-year-old 
presidential candidate bristled over questions concerning allegations of 
past and present supporters' links to drug trafficking. Excerpts:

CONTRERAS: You have called for more U.S. military aid to help Colombia 
fight communist guerrillas as well as drug traffickers.

URIBE: I have supported Plan Colombia from the beginning, but we need to 
improve it. We also need similar assistance to prevent crimes like 
terrorism, kidnapping and massacres. Our natural ally in this area is the 
United States. We're not speaking of soldiers. We are talking about [more] 
helicopters, trainers, technology and money.

What is your counternarcotics strategy?

The armed forces estimate that 20 planes carrying cocaine fly out of 
Colombia daily. Without [the resumption of] interdiction flights, Plan 
Colombia will fail. The fight against drugs must also include a social 
component for the farmers who plant coca and opium poppies. I am proposing 
an agreement with 50,000 peasant families that would give them between 
$2,000 and $2,500 a year, provided they stop raising drug crops.

Three years of peace talks with Colombia's largest guerrilla army yielded 
no results. How will your government deal with the guerrillas? I don't rule 
out negotiations. But the guerrillas will have to accept a ceasefire and 
make a commitment to refrain from terrorist activity as preconditions.

The U.S. State Department added Colombia's 8,000-strong right-wing militias 
to its list of terrorist groups last year. What policy would your 
government adopt toward those outlawed forces? The same as the policy 
toward the guerrillas.

As governor of Antioquia state in the mid-1990s, you promoted the creation 
of civilian vigilante organizations known as Convivir, and human-rights 
groups say that some of them later cooperated with paramilitary units. Do 
you regret that policy? We needed to organize civilians in support of 
security forces, and none of the Convivir groups in my state deteriorated 
into illegal paramilitary forces. There were problems with two of them, and 
I immediately suspended their operations.

Some Colombians regard you as the preferred candidate of the paramilitary 
groups. I have never met any members of either the paramilitary forces or 
the guerrillas. [Paramilitary leader] Carlos Castano has clearly said he 
does not know me. I once met [paramilitary supremo ] Salvatore Mancuso many 
years ago when he was a cattle rancher but have not spoken with him since 
he became a paramilitary member.

But many years ago when you... I won't answer that. If I have links to the 
paramilitary groups, file a complaint with the appropriate authorities.

Questions have been raised about some of your political allies. The U.S. 
State Department rescinded the visa of Sen. Fuad Char because he was 
suspected of laundering money. Fuad Char voted in favor of permitting the 
extradition of drug traffickers wanted in the United States. Fuad Char is 
an honorable man in his public and private lives.

In 1997 and 1998, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] 
seized 50,000 kilos of a chemical precursor used in the processing of 
cocaine. Those chemicals had been allegedly purchased by a company 
belonging to Pedro Juan Moreno, who served as your cabinet chief when you 
were governor of Antioquia. I became aware of that only after my term as 
governor ended. If the charges are true, he should go to jail. If they are 
groundless, the DEA should rectify that error. I believe that an error was 
made in his case.

According to a best-selling book about the drug trade entitled "The Jockeys 
of Cocaine," you spoke out on behalf of a low-income housing program in 
Medellin that was funded by drug lord Pablo Escobar when you were mayor of 
that city in 1982... I asked the attorney general's office to investigate 
that matter, and I was completely cleared of those charges. That housing 
program was well underway when I became mayor. I had nothing to do with that.

Well-informed sources say that a record number of pilot's licenses and 
airstrip construction permits were issued by the civil-aviation authority 
when you headed that agency in the 1980s, a period when drug trafficking 
was on the rise... Let's not talk further. I see that you have come here to 
smear my political career.

Your deputy at the aviation authority was a man named Cesar Villegas, later 
sentenced to five years in prison for his links to the Cali cartel and 
murdered earlier this month... I refuse to accept that you foreign 
correspondents come here to ask me these kinds of questions and repeat 
slanders made against me. All I say is this: as a politician, I have been 
honorable and accountable. We have nothing else to discuss.
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