Colombia's Ambassador to U.S. Resigns

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia's Ambassador to U.S. Resigns

Wednesday July 12, 2006 6:46 AM
By JOSHUA GOODMAN

Associated Press Writer

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia's ambassador to the United States resigned Tuesday in anger over President Alvaro Uribe's selection of a disgraced former Colombian leader as ambassador to France.

Andres Pastrana, the main defender in Washington of Colombia's cooperation in the war on drugs, said Uribe's support for Ernesto Samper, whose U.S. visa was revoked because of alleged ties to drug traffickers, ``left him without a choice but to resign.''
(snip)

Samper was nearly impeached over allegations his campaign accepted $5 million in contributions from the Cali cocaine cartel. He was cleared by Colombia's legislature of wrongdoing, but saw his visa to the U.S. stripped and top aides sent to jail.

On Tuesday, Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, called Uribe's appointment of Samper an ``incredibly maladroit'' move that could stir the U.S. Congress to curtail its support for the country's counter-narcotics efforts.
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5945628,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Uribe's ambassador
to France, Ernesto Samper

Colombian House Absolves President Ernesto Samper, U.S. Revokes His Visa

~snip~
The charges of Samper's corruption arose from disclosure of tape recordings between Cali drug lords and Samper campaign aides, and allegations by Samper's 1994 campaign manager and treasurer. Colombia's chief prosecutor, Alfonso Valdivieso, charged Samper with illicit enrichment, falsifying documents, electoral fraud and obstruction of justice. Samper conceded that tainted money had entered the campaign, but claimed that he was unaware of it and was therefore not guilty. Colombian media have called the debate in Congress "the trial of the century" because it marked the first time a sitting president has been subjected to possible impeachment.
(snip)

http://www.ndsn.org/summer96/colombia.html



The Death of Pablo Escobar

by Fernando Botero
(Colombian painter)

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,462348,00.jpg

[Binka]

1. incredibly maladroit...THAT'S an UNDERSTATEMENT!

:wtf: Is everyone NUTS?

[Bacchus39]

2. both Pastrana and Samper were weak and ineffective

n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. Another unacceptable move by Bush's friend Alvaro Uribe:

Colombia Seeks to Rein in Rights Watchdog
By JOSHUA GOODMAN
Associated Press Writer

July 12, 2006, 11:03 AM EDT


BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe's government is lobbying to restrict a U.N. agency that has been the most trusted monitor of human rights violations in Colombia, according to foreign diplomats and rights activists.

The diplomats say Colombian officials are trying to remove the agency's right to publicly criticize human rights abuses and publish an annual report on one of the hemisphere's worst rights records. And with the U.N. human rights office's four-year mandate expiring in October, the agency is particularly vulnerable, they say.

The U.N.'s Bogota office, one of 34 such missions around the world, has verified 8,100 human rights abuses in Colombia since it was founded in 1997, implicating rebels, paramilitaries and government forces alike in Colombia's four-decade old civil war.

The agency recently revealed details of the killings of 29 civilians in the last 18 months, including pregnant women and children, by security forces who claimed the victims were rebels. Rights groups say the U.N.'s work helped lead to the arrest of 18 soldiers, an embarrassing development for the law and order Uribe.

Now Uribe's government has been lobbying foreign governments to drop the agency's independent monitoring role and limit its work to technical support for the Colombian government, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
(snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-colombia-un-human-rights-lh1,0,1207595.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[cliss]

4. All roads lead to....

...Bush.

Wherever there are nefarious deeds, shadowy friendships, money to be looted, look no further than the Bush family.

All Crime, All the time.

[Bacchus39]

5. a little exaggerated isn't it?

Darfur? the bombings in India? The FARC? Brittany Spears?

[cliss]

10. Yes....

but I enjoyed writing it anyway...

[Judi Lynn]

6. Colombia's US ambassador quits over political flap

Colombia's US ambassador quits over political flap
Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:14am ET

By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia's ambassador to the United States quit late on Tuesday over the nomination of disgraced former President Ernesto Samper as ambassador to France, an appointment opposed by Washington.

Andres Pastrana, himself a former president, said he resigned rather than try to defend the nomination of Samper, whose presidency in the 1990s was overshadowed by allegations that his campaign was financed in part by cocaine smugglers.

"The president insisted that I stay, but ... I could not defend this appointment," Pastrana told reporters.
(snip)

"Uribe is learning the hard way that Bogota is not as critical to Washington as it was before Calderon won the presidency in Mexico," Avila said. "The number of friends that Chavez has in the region is not growing, which makes Uribe less indispensable from the White House's point of view."
(snip)

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-07-12T071405Z_01_N123462_RTRUKOC_0_US-COLOMBIA-AMBASSADOR.xml&pageNumber=1&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage1

[Bacchus39]

7. you forgot to quote this part, biased editing

note that the article is only 4 paragraphs long but this is the one you CHOSE to leave out.

"The United States was very much against the appointment of Samper as ambassador," said political commentator Ricardo Avila."

but I keep forgetting you are trying to put Colombia in bad light since they are a US ally, and if Colombia does something the US opposes, that just doesn't fit with your strategy.

[Judi Lynn]

8. BBC News: Uribe in Colombia diplomats' row

Last Updated: Wednesday, 12 July 2006, 13:23 GMT 14:23 UK

Uribe in Colombia diplomats' row

Ernesto Samper: Controversial figure
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has provoked upheaval in his country's diplomatic ranks by nominating Ernesto Samper as the new ambassador to France.
Colombia's ambassador to the US, Andres Pastrana, quit suddenly saying he could not defend Mr Samper's appointment.

Mr Samper, president from 1994 to 98, had his US visa revoked in the 1990s over alleged ties to drug traffickers.

He has now withdrawn his candidacy for the Paris post, forcing Mr Uribe to reshuffle the top diplomatic jobs.

Mr Pastrana, himself president from 1998 to 2002, said Mr Uribe's support for Mr Samper left him with no choice but to resign.

"This changes Colombia's policy and it changes it radically," Mr Pastrana said after several hours of talks with officials in Bogota.
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5173048.stm

[Bacchus39]

9. Pastrana

His presidency is remembered first for his negotiations with the two left-wing guerrilla groups FARC and ELN, culminating in the grant of a demilitarezed safe haven to the guerrillas the size of Switzerland, and second for his breaking off said negotiations. It is also remembered for a growing degree of unpopularity in polls as his term progressed and for accusations of corruption. Some critics accused him of possibly accepting unspecified bribes from leading FARC and ELN members, but no concrete evidence of that was presented during his presidency. His administration proposed and initially oversaw the implementation of the controversial Plan Colombia aid package and anti-drug strategy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Pastrana_Arango


Later years
After President Álvaro Uribe Vélez took office, financial files of President Pastrana's Government were unsealed and millions of dollars of loss and misbudgets were found, including almost 20 million dollars in missing funds that were assumed to be caused by corruption. Despite this, none of the files were able to be tracked back to President Pastrana himself, although some of his administration's former officials were implicated.

In 2005 President Uribe, who had been a critic of Pastrana's peace process with the FARC and had received criticisms from Pastrana regarding his negotiations with Colombian paramilitary groups, surprisingly offered the former president the post of Ambassador to Washington. After consulting his family and political supporters, Pastrana accepted.

Some political analysts theorized that Uribe considered that Pastrana would be an useful diplomat in Washington, because he would help to renegotiate Plan Colombia and in general to maintain U.S. aid to Colombia, which has contributed to the successes of the Uribe administration. Nowadays he is Ambassador of Colombia in Washington.