BOGOTA — US under-secretary of state for political affairs Marc Grossman led a delegation of senior US political and military leaders to Colombia to hold talks with the government of newly elected President Ivaro Uribe Velez.

Major-General Gary Speer, deputy commander in chief of the United States Military Southern Command, was also on the delegation, heightening fears that Washington is planning on increasing its military intervention in the Colombian civil war.

According to initial reports, the key aim of the US delegation was to extract a promise from the new Colombian government that it would shield US military personnel from prosecution for any human rights violations that they may commit in the course of their activities in Colombia. Apparently the US officials threatened to cut off all military aid to Colombia should such a guarantee not be given.

At the same time as Washington insists on immunity from prosecution for US violators of human rights in Colombia it publicly demands that the Colombian government improve its human rights record. Only last month new US legislation allowed for a shift in the activities of US military forces in Colombia from counter-narcotics activities into a more direct counterinsurgency role in an area where human rights groups say that the Pentagon has a abysmal past.

[From <http://www.anncol.com>.]

From Green Left Weekly, August 28, 2002.
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