COLOMBIA: US demands immunity for its soldiers

BY ALFREDO CASTRO

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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From GLW issue 506