Argentina, August 29: South America’s presidents ended their debate Friday on a pending deal to expand the U.S. troop presence in Colombia, saying foreign troops should not be allowed to threaten any of the region’s nations.
The leaders also instructed their foreign and defense ministers to meet next month and come up with a cooperation agreement that would enable the UNASUR group to inspect military bases in each member country to confirm that promises are being kept.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe appeared to go along with this base supervision idea, although the presidents began to leave while the summit declaration was still being drafted and there was no signing ceremony.
“There are no guarantees” in life, said Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, the group’s rotating president. “We hope it works, that this UNASUR defense council will be able to supervise the bases … what more can we do?”
For hours, Uribe defended his U.S. military alliance against tough criticism, saying the United States was alone in answering his nation’s call for help against drug traffickers and terrorists.
“We are not playing some political game,” Uribe declared after others accused him of destabilizing the continent by giving U.S. troops more maneuvering room on Colombian bases.
Uribe provided few details about the 10-year base deal, and his rivals spent much of the summit, broadcast live across the continent, painting the U.S. as a menace to peace and security, despite the goodwill generated by President Barack Obama’s election.
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez read from a document in which he said Pentagon planners saw Colombia’s bases as a jumping off point for “expeditionary” forces to secure whatever might be in the U.S. strategic interest in South America.
“They’re mobilizing for war,” Chavez charged.
“This greatly worries me, and I can’t accept that a U.S. document treats us like a back porch,” said Correa, who proposed an urgent meeting with Obama.
Uribe said the document was merely a proposal from a group of U.S. academics that is publicly available on the Internet. Strategic defense planning is what they do, he said, but “Colombia’s focus is completely the opposite. The only focus that Colombia has is to end its internal war.”
The presidents also instructed the UNASUR defense committee to analyze the document before deciding whether to press Obama to provide more explanations.
Uribe urged his neighbors to take more responsibility in the fight against “narcoterrorists” — prompting angry retorts from Bolivia’s Evo Morales, among others.
Morales, who rose to power through a coca growers union, said U.S. soldiers accompanying Bolivian troops fired at his union members. “I witnessed this,” Morales said.
“So now we’re narcoterrorists. When they couldn’t call us communists anymore, they called us subversives, and then traffickers, and since the September 11 attacks, terrorists,” Morales added. “The history of Latin America repeats itself.”
The ultimate responsibility for Latin America’s violence lies with U.S. consumers of illegal drugs, Morales said, before answering his own rhetorical question: “If UNASUR sent troops to the United States to control consumption, would they accept it? Impossible!”
Chavez accused Colombia of hypocrisy, saying it harbors the “terrorist” Pedro Carmona, a Venezuelan business leader who briefly served as president when Chavez was ousted in an aborted 2002 coup.
Uribe countered that Venezuela has provided refuge to two leaders of Colombia’s leftist FARC rebel army — Luciano Marin Arango, alias Ivan Marquez, and Rodrigo Londono, alias Timochenko. Venezuela has always denied this; Chavez had no immediate response.
U.S. and Colombian diplomats have spent weeks trying to calm fears since The Associated Press reported details of the military contract, which would let U.S. troops use space at seven Colombian bases for 10 years.
The deal, which is done and just awaits signatures, also gives the U.S. troops immunity from prosecution in Colombia, and envisions millions of dollars in construction to support warplanes and other U.S. military hardware.
Latin American leaders tend to be suspicious of foreign militaries in a region where U.S.-backed dictatorships killed and tortured their own citizens only decades ago. The unresolved coup in Honduras — by a military with close U.S. ties and training — worries them as well.
Political instability tends to fuel defense spending: the 12 UNASUR nations spent about $51 billion last year on their militaries — up 30 percent from 2007, according to the Center for a New Majority, a Buenos Aires research group.
Fernando Lugo, who came to power after a long career a priest and bishop among Paraguay’s poor, criticized the region’s defense spending. Peru’s Alan Garcia called it “shameful.”
Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he also wants Obama to explain what role the U.S. will play in Latin America. “I think we have to have a good discussion with the United States.”
But Silva failed to persuade his fellow leaders to find common ground.
“One person can blame another, but that doesn’t solve the problem,” he said, shrugging and raising both hands. “When we’re together at a table like this one, we must decide beforehand if we want to build an atmosphere of peace or of war. If it’s for peace, we could put an end once and for all with all those threats and differences.”
At the end, Silva couldn’t hide his frustration as the leaders bickered over their joint statement. Three of the presidents were gone before the official photo.
It would have been better, Silva said, to turn off the cameras.
–Agencies