| | |  Americas & Beyond | August 2009 
LatAm Leaders Assail Colombia, US Troop Plan
 Ana Isabel Martinez - Reuters
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August 07, 2009
| | Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez looks on as he waits for the Colombia's Former President Ernesto Samper at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano) | |
Caracas - South America's hard-line leftist leaders this week criticized U.S. plans to deploy extra troops at bases in Colombia, accusing Washington of using the war on drugs as a pretext to boost its regional military presence.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is meeting South American leaders this week to try to generate support for the U.S. plan to base anti-drug flights in the world's top cocaine producer after the U.S. military lost access to a base in neighboring Ecuador.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - a persistent critic of Washington - said the Colombian plan could be a step toward war in South America and called on President Barack Obama not to increase the U.S. military presence in Colombia.
"These bases could be the start of a war in South America," the socialist Chavez told reporters. "We're talking about the Yankees, the most aggressive nation in human history."
Chavez, who has put his troops on alert in previous diplomatic disputes with Colombia, ratcheted up the spat with Bogota by barring Colombian state-run energy firm Ecopetrol from the Orinoco oil region and said imports of some 10,000 vehicles would be halted.
A close Chavez ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, a former coca farmer who ousted U.S. anti-drug agents last year, said Colombia's drug-funded FARC rebels had become Washington's "best tool" to justify military operations in the region.
"We can't have all these planes and military equipment concentrated in Colombia. This is against the FARC. This isn't against drug-trafficking, it's against the region. Our duty is to reject it," said Morales, who met Uribe on Tuesday.
Uribe's security drive would give U.S. forces access to seven Colombian bases and increase the number of U.S. troops in the Andean nation above the current total of less than 300 but not more than 800, the maximum permitted under an existing pact.
Even Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the prominent moderate in the region, has expressed concern over the U.S.-Colombia talks on a bigger U.S. troop presence and an Argentine government source said President Cristina Fernandez had told Uribe the plan was "worrying."
Uribe also met on Wednesday with another moderate, Chile's center-left President Michelle Bachelet, whose government was more restrained.
OBAMA STRATEGY SPOILED?
The uproar over Uribe's strategy could spoil Obama's efforts to improve ties with Latin America while carrying on the war on drugs, which critics say has failed.
Obama won praise for condemning a military coup in June that ousted Honduras' left-wing president. |
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