Posted on 11/23/2007 5:54:30 PM PST by Kaslin
Diplomacy: The peace-at-any-price crowd is outraged by the way Colombia's president yanked the right of Hugo Chavez to talk with terrorists. But all Alvaro Uribe did was signal that in diplomacy, results matter.
Colombia's president, at the urging of France's Nicolas Sarkozy, last August gave Venezuelan dictator Chavez a chance to mediate the release of 45 hostages held in Colombia's jungle dungeons by FARC, a brutal Marxist narcoterrorist group at war with Colombia since 1964. The French wanted FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a Franco-Colombian citizen kidnapped in 2002, freed. Three American contractors are also on the hostage list.
Who better than the thuggish Chavez? Or so the wisdom went. The radical Venezuelan leader is a hero to the narcoterrorists, who've festooned their Web site with praises for his "revolution." If anyone could persuade them to release hostages, it would be him.
But it didn't take long for Uribe to realize talks with terrorists would go nowhere. So instead of going along, Uribe pulled the plug.
Uribe's move offers lessons in how to deal with terrorists in an era when peace talks go on, emboldening terrorists to act out.
Five lessons stand out.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
< blockquote> Good read.
The French have nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. It’s not just about who has the biggest army anymore. It’s about time the French started throwing their weight around. Any longer and it would be too late...
Maybe we could pay them to give lessons to the US State Dept. This meeting in Annapolis will go nowhere.
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