Posted on 02/12/2003 12:21:48 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- Colombian Defense Minister Marta Ramirez said Tuesday the weekend car bombing in Bogota that killed 32 people was a highly sophisticated operation that probably received technical assistance from foreign groups.
Ramirez, in Washington for talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials, mentioned the Irish Republican Army and the Spanish Basque separatist group ETA as possible sources of the expertise.
Colombian officials have blamed the bombing on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish initials FARC. Ramirez said FARC militants are accustomed to life in the jungle, where, she said, they have no access to the techniques of car bombs and other intricate operations.
Reflecting the growing guerrilla propensity for carrying the civil war to urban centers, Ramirez said police were able to thwart six car bombings in Bogota in December alone.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe suggested at the time that there may have been an ETA or IRA role in the bombing attempts.
Colombian authorities established an IRA link with the FARC several years ago when they took into custody three foreign members of the IRA. Colombia's civil war has persisted for 38 years.
Friday's bombing occurred at the 11-story El Nogal Club, a gathering place for the country's elite.
Ramirez called on Colombia's neighbors to provide assistance by seizing the assets of militant Colombian groups and taking other steps recommended in U.N. Security Council anti-terrorism resolutions.
"We are in front of a very serious threat," she said.
The FARC and two other rebel groups -- one leftist and one rightist -- are all on the State Department list of foreign terror organizations.
Ramirez also took note of the dependency of terror groups on cocaine exports to sustain their operations.
"Every time cocaine is consumed, terrorist groups are being financed," she said.
Ramirez was meeting Tuesday afternoon with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In addition to Rumsfeld, she also had meetings planned with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA official A.B. Krongard and John Walters, the White House narcotics control chief.
Also on her schedule are meetings with the police chiefs of New York City and Washington, D.C.
Her schedule was set before Friday's bombing, the worst such incident in Colombia in more than a decade.
Other noteworthy terrorist incidents in Latin America include a bombing at the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and another at a Jewish Center in that country in 1994.
In the latter incident, nearly 100 people were killed and more than 200 injured.
Ramirez said she was pleased with the cooperation Colombia is receiving from the Bush administration.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying Tuesday before the Senate Budget Committee, noted that the administration is seeking almost $500 million for Colombia in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.
The funding, he said, will support Uribe's unified campaign against terrorists and the drug trade that, he said, fuels terrorist activity.
"The aim is to secure democracy, extend security and restore economic prosperity to Colombia and prevent the narcoterrorists from spreading instability to the broader Andean region," Powell said.
''It was a huge explosion. I thought an airplane had crashed outside'' said Luis Moreno, who lives across the street from the club on Seventh Avenue and whose apartment building's windows were shattered.
''We were having dinner when the bomb went off,'' said a man, his face blackened from smoke, as his wife was carried away on a stretcher by paramedics. Scores of people stumbled from the wrecked building, many with their faces streaked with blood.
Jorge Velandia, who works at the club's miniature golf course, said the blast opened up a hole in one of the floors and people tumbled through.
Searchers picked through the wreckage today, looking for victims. Rescuers pulled a 12-year-old girl out of the rubble. Several other children are among the injured. Witnesses had said children were to put on a ballet show at the club.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had said several months ago it intended to attack Colombia's elite.***
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Feb 8, 2003 - Colombian ex-rebel says he saw Irish trio setting off explosives***BOGOTA - In dramatic testimony, a former Colombian guerrilla, Edwin Giovanni Rodríguez, testified Friday in a packed courtroom that he witnessed three suspected members of the Irish Republican Army testing weapons in Colombia's former demilitarized zone.
James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley were arrested in August 2001 at Bogotá's El Dorado airport on charges of using false passports. The three men were later found to have IRA links and are on trial for allegedly helping train the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest insurgent group.
Surrounded by heavy security, Rodríguez, 25, testified wearing a bulletproof vest after being transported from prison in Villavicencio, where he is serving a four-year sentence.
Rodríguez, the ex-chauffeur for FARC commander Jorge Briceño described three men whose names he could not confirm who he claimed to have seen in the former demilitarized zone starting on Feb. 5, 2001.
He could not confirm their nationality but said they were known as ''gringos,'' a term used to refer to anyone who didn't speak native Spanish. On Feb. 5, Rodríguez said he was instructed to pick up a person he later recognized as Monaghan in a village in Caquetá and take him to a place called La Y, about three miles away from the demilitarized zone, then controlled by the FARC.
Though he never knew their names, Rodríguez said he recognized the three after they appeared on a television broadcast while he was in prison.
''I know them because when they were captured Jorge Briceño addressed 120 units and said they have already given us what we wanted and from now on they're on their own,'' Rodríguez testified.
Rodríguez said he saw Monaghan frequently because he ferried him to a classroom, where he, along with the two other foreigners, instructed 120 guerrillas in explosives. Though Rodríguez was never inside the classroom, he stood guard outside and apparently overheard what was said inside. After the lessons were complete, Rodríguez testified that he ''was asked to take [Monaghan] to test what had been taught and this was in Los Pozos,'' about two hours from the classroom.***
Iraq, No. Korea, the IRA, Libya, et al, all lend financial support and expertise to world terrorism.
There is no head, per say, and only by crushing them fiercely, whenever they arise, will others take heed and fear.
Since December, left-wing rebels claim, the government has been conducting peace talks at the tony club with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary group. The paramilitaries, headed by Carlos Castaño, wanted in the United States on charges of drug trafficking and terrorism, had implemented a unilateral cease-fire.
But on a website friendly to the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which President Alvaro Uribe Vélez blamed for Friday's car bomb, a message read: "The luxurious club was the frequent site of meetings between political and business sectors with spokesmen for paramilitaries," the Resistance Network site said. "The current process of legalizing paramilitaries is the product of meetings held in different luxury locales in exclusive northern BogotÁ."
Now, in addition to the 32 people killed and 160 wounded in explosion - the biggest terrorist incident here in more than a decade - the most significant casualty may be the peace process itself. The AUC is hinting that it will once again take up arms against the FARC.
Dueling websites
In a letter posted on its website, the AUC said: "If the guerrillas [do not abandon] their practices against the civilian population in their crazy war against the legitimate state, the declaration of peace by the AUC should be revised in letter, if not in spirit." The group added that the leftist guerrillas have taken advantage of the cease-fire to advance their military agenda instead of seeking a negotiated end to the conflict.
The FARC has not taken explicit responsibility for the blast.
Independent Colombian defense analyst Alfredo Rangel says that if the AUC does indeed resume its battle against left-wing rebels, the peace process is in jeopardy, as the government has refused to negotiate without a cease-fire.
"I don't see [the process] broken, but I see it in a situation of very high risk," Mr. Rangel says.
The paramilitaries began as a loose coalition of ranchers protecting themselves against drug traffickers in the 1980s. But in the absence of strong government forces, it soon evolved into a right-wing army to battle the FARC.
Last week, El Tiempo, Colombia's leading newspaper, published a schedule of peace talks that was to conclude at the end of this year with the signing of a peace accord witnessed by former US President Jimmy Carter.
During the first "negotiation" phase, lasting from January to June 11, meetings would take place between government peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, Mr. Castaño, and Salvatore Mancuso, another paramilitary chief wanted by the US. Topics under consideration are freezing arrest warrants for AUC members involved in negotiations and the return of people displaced by the four-decade conflict to paramilitary-controlled land.
In a surprise move last week, Castaño requested to a local radio program that the government create a "concentration zone" where peace talks could be held in Urabá, in the state of Antioquia. The idea brought to mind the failed demilitarized zone granted to the FARC in 1998 by former President Andres Pastrana as a haven for peace talks. The large zone was revoked a year ago this week after the FARC continued its violent behavior and used the zone to stash kidnapping victims and grow coca.
But Castaño insisted that "it is not the same concept," because the police and the Army would be allowed in the area along with international observers. Furthermore, such a zone would only be two to five miles square, compared with the demilitarized zone that was the size of Switzerland.
Rangel points out that such a zone had worked to help demobilize five illegal armed groups in the past, but says "state control" was the key.
The final phase of "demobilization and reinsertion," to begin on June 11 and end Dec. 31, would call on the 20,000 AUC members to lay down their arms in the presence of Mr. Carter or some other international observer.
But there are many obstacles to real peace, including the abstention of several large chunks of the AUC - including the 1,500 Metro Bloc and the "Bloque Elmer Cardenas," with 2,000 men.
Rodrigo, who did not give his last name, the head of the "Bloque Metro," which holds sway in Medellín, said that the peace process was doomed to failure if all the parties don't participate. "We conceive of the peace process as a stage of national reconciliation and reconstruction, which, if there is not represented all of the actors in the conflict and civil society, won't have validity," he told El Tiempo.
Looking for US help
President Uribe warned that rebels were planning more attacks on Colombia's cities. "Authorities and citizens must be permanently alert," Uribe said Sunday night in nationally televised remarks. Colombia's defense minister, Martha Lucia Ramirez, flew to Miami on Monday to meet with US military leaders. US officials have vowed to continue to help Colombia fight its illegal armed groups. [End]
o Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Throughout his presidency Chavez has battled PdVSA's management, trying to destroy the autonomy that many say was the secret to the company's much-vaunted efficiency. Before the strike Chavez's efforts to wrest control of PdVSA had failed. But when oil company executives threw their weight behind the opposition strike in December, they miscalculated badly. Two months later, thousands of PdVSA's top managers have been fired and Chavez is firmly in control. It remains to be seen if the new, inexperienced managers can bring back production to normal levels.
Either way, the United States faces a difficult choice. Does it place support for democracy above or below its need to secure oil supplies? While Washington may not like Chavez, he has pledged to continue to supply the United States with oil. It was in the name of democracy -- and to prevent what it feared was the spread of Cuban-inspired communism -- that the Reagan administration became deeply involved in Central America in the 1980s. But the world has moved on since the Cold War. Now the White House is fighting a new enemy: terrorism. Meanwhile, no one in Washington seems to be paying much attention to the spread of left-wing ideas -- not to mention anti-Americanism -- in its own back yard.***
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