Pubdate: Wed, 21 Feb 2007
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2007 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/contactus.pl
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author: Sibylla Brodzinsky, Correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor

CRIME LINKS SHAKE UP COLOMBIAN LEADERSHIP

A Minister Resigned Monday, Days After Her Brother's Arrest For 
Helping Paramilitaries

Bogota, Colombia -- Colombia is scrambling to contain international 
fallout from a ballooning political scandal surrounding ties between 
some of President lvaro Uribe's closest collaborators and right-wing 
death squads.

Mr. Uribe's image has been tarnished by the arrest of eight lawmakers 
from his governing coalition, jailed on charges they colluded with 
paramilitary groups responsible for some of Colombia's most grisly 
crimes. The crisis threatens to debilitate his government just as it 
seeks a new $3.9 billion US aid package and ratification of a free 
trade deal with Washington, and prepares for a visit by President 
Bush next month.

Uribe himself appears untouched by the burgeoning scandal, but his 
foreign minister, Mara Consuelo Arajo, was forced to resign on Monday 
after her brother, a senator, was among five lawmakers arrested last 
week for collusion with the paramilitary groups. Sen. lvaro Arajo is 
charged with ordering the kidnapping of a political rival.

Ms. Arajo's resignation and replacement by recently escaped kidnap 
victim Fernando Arajo . who is not related . served as temporary 
damage control but the truth of the ties between paramilitaries and 
politicians is only starting to emerge.

Even as the minister announced her resignation, the Supreme Court was 
questioning three other senators who, along with some 40 other 
politicians allied to Uribe, signed a political manifesto drafted by 
the paramilitaries in 2001 in which they vowed to build a new 
Colombia based on a strong state. And opposition senator Gustavo 
Petro plans to schedule hearings in March into the spread of 
paramilitary power in Antioquia Province, when Uribe was governor 
there in the mid-1990s. He has promised to present evidence 
implicating one of the president's brothers as an alleged member of a 
paramilitary group.

"This [scandal] couldn't come at a worse time," for Uribe says Myles 
Frechette, former US ambassador to Colombia.

Mr. Bush will be in Bogot in early March on a visit meant to 
underscore Washington's support for its most important ally in South 
America, a region of growing anti-US sentiment. The United States has 
provided more than $4.5 billion, mostly in military aid, for Colombia 
since 2000 for anti-drug and counterinsurgency operations. And the 
Bush administration is now asking Congress for another $3.9 billion 
over the next six years.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, chairman of the Appropriations 
subcommittee that oversees aid to Colombia, said US lawmakers would 
bear in mind the scandal when they consider this year's budget 
request for Bogot.

"As the new US Congress takes stock of this situation and the 
justification for continued US outlays to Colombia, American 
taxpayers deserve assurances that the Colombian government has 
severed links to these terrorist groups," said Mr. Leahy in a 
statement. "The Colombian government is not simply a victim of their 
corrupt influences. Too often it has tolerated them, colluded with them."

With Democrats now in control of the both the House and Senate, 
analysts say that Bush's request for more funding to Uribe's 
government may face serious scrutiny. "Washington's relationship with 
Colombia has been based on trust in Uribe. But at this point even the 
Republicans are starting to lose faith in Uribe," says Arlene Tickner 
an analyst of Colombian-US relations at Bogot's Los Andes University.

Still, it is unlikely that Congress will be willing to sacrifice the 
US's closest South American ally. "The US continues to need Uribe to 
a certain degree," says Ms. Tickner.

And Colombia certainly still needs the US. Defense Minister Juan 
Manuel Santos warned that if the US pulled or severely cut its 
funding, the Uribe government could be imperiled. "This is when we 
need their support the most, because if all this collapses we will 
return to a democracy without authority or power," says Mr. Santos. 
"When we explain to them [US lawmakers] what is happening, they will 
understand that this for the good [of the country], it is not bad."

Colombia's paramilitary groups were originally formed by wealthy 
cattle ranchers, business owners, and drug mafias in the 1980s to 
fight off extortion and kidnapping by leftist guerrillas. The 
paramilitaries later turned into powerful armies heavily involved in 
drug trafficking and extortion themselves, who used their power to 
control local politics and politicians and even infiltrated the 
prosecutor's office and courts.

The former chiefs of the militia groups, which has demobilized some 
31,000 troops in the past three years, are currently being prosecuted 
for their crimes under a controversial law that grants them reduced 
prison sentences of up to eight years for confessing.

Despite the scandal, Uribe maintains high approval ratings 
domestically. A recent Gallup poll showed that 73 percent of 
Colombians approve of their president.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman