Uribe to face tough audience in U.S.

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA —  After five years in office, President Alvaro Uribe is beset by charges that his close associates have been cozy with murderous paramilitaries and that his government has illicitly wiretapped its citizens and failed to protect the safety of labor organizers. Moreover, Colombian cocaine production is as robust as ever after billions of dollars in American aid spent to curb it.

When Republicans were in control of the U.S. Congress, Uribe, a U.S.-educated ally of President Bush, managed to convince the leadership that despite ongoing problems, he was still fighting against drugs and terrorism as best as could be expected.

Now as Uribe arrives in Washington today on one of his frequent trips to lobby Congress, the tables have turned. At this pivotal point in binational relations, he faces a Democratic majority far more prone to blame him for a slew of human rights abuses, the alarming alleged paramilitary connections to his government and the failure to slow cocaine production.

The latest setback occurred Monday, when the White House released a survey showing that despite massive spraying of defoliants to wipe out coca crops, farming of the base material for cocaine in Colombia grew 9% in acreage in 2006, the third straight year of increases. The growth came despite a 24% jump in spraying, prompting critics to call for a new approach to the Plan Colombia anti-drug and terrorism aid package, which costs the U.S. $700 million a year.

Interviewed in his office this week in the ornate Spanish Colonial presidential palace prior to his departure, Uribe displayed the stubborn streak that has proved a political asset at home, where he enjoys a 70% approval rating, and until recent months in the halls of the U.S. Congress.

Uribe downplayed the White House survey and waved off suggestions that the anti-coca spraying program was a failure. He said the statistics released this week showing coca cultivation rising for the third consecutive year left him “confused.”

Uribe said a separate survey of coca cultivation directed by the United Nations will show an 8% drop in acres planted with coca bushes. Those results are to be released next week, he said.

Besides, he has “many reasons” to believe illicit drug production has declined in Colombia, he said. “We have dismantled paramilitaries, weakened the guerrillas and reduced the narco-economy.”

Disarmament cited

To charges that he has not taken responsibility for a widening scandal over his political allies’ alleged ties to right-wing paramilitary fighters, he replied with a recitation of his administration’s accomplishments, chiefly the disarmament of 43,000 of the 60,000 fighters that he said were active when he took office in 2002.

“The only answer I can give is that,” said Uribe, an intense 54-year-old attorney with degrees from Harvard and Oxford whose 15-hour workdays leave staff members exhausted.

“I persevere every day. That is my duty at the moment,” Uribe said. “A Spanish adage says, ‘Perseverance overcomes what happiness doesn’t reach.’ ”

Uribe is known for his serious and plain-spoken demeanor. He is admiringly called a “carrot,” which in Colombian slang means a square.

But Uribe can also turn on the charm. He is hosting a gathering in New York City on Friday night to honor former President Clinton, during whose administration Plan Colombia got its start. With Colombian pop diva Shakira at his side, Uribe is expected to ask Clinton to help in the Capitol Hill lobbying effort.

But it’s not clear how far Uribe’s forceful personality will take him with the current Congress. Democratic leaders have apparently made up their minds that Plan Colombia should be trimmed by 10% in fiscal 2008, the first aid cut since 1999. Much of what’s left would be directed away from the aerial spraying program and toward economic subsidies to farmers.

Labor worries

Long before the release of the White House cultivation survey, labor-friendly Democrats were already at odds with Uribe because of the occupational hazards for union organizers here. In recent years, more labor organizers have been killed in Colombia than in all other countries combined. Labor groups say 77 union officials were killed in 2006, up from 70 in 2005, possibly by paramilitary thugs.

The slayings have declined considerably in 2007, but critics complain that Uribe should have made protecting labor unions a priority long ago.

Colombia’s poor environmental and human rights records are also more important to Democrats. Both are big reasons why the passage of a U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement is now a long shot.

U.S. Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said she would withhold support for a free-trade bill until she saw the Uribe government meet “certain benchmarks ... including fewer reports of physical assault or threats against labor organizers and increased prosecution of offenders over at least a two-year period.”

Democrats are also concerned about the arrests of 13 Colombian legislators, all but one Uribe supporters, on charges of consorting with outlaw paramilitary groups.

Also in jail is the former director of Colombia’s equivalent of the FBI, charged with giving investigative files to paramilitaries. He had been handpicked by Uribe despite a questionable work history.

Uribe’s administration was rocked last month by another scandal when the government acknowledged that the national police had tapped the phones of nearly 100 opposition members, government officials and journalists. Uribe and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who is responsible for the security forces, denied any knowledge of the wiretaps.

The succession of scandals has led Democrats to demand that Uribe come up with dramatic evidence that he is addressing labor, environmental and human rights problems as a condition of a bilateral free-trade deal. The release this week of the first of about 190 leftist guerrillas from government prisons, with no assurance that the insurgents will reciprocate with any of the thousands of hostages they hold, has been seen as an effort by Uribe to burnish his human rights credentials.

Uribe said in the interview Tuesday that the release was simply a “unilateral humanitarian gesture looking for the release of the people” kidnapped by leftist rebels.

This week’s cocaine cultivation statistics have prompted calls by Plan Colombia critics for a reevaluation of the program, which is focused heavily at present on crop eradication.

“The key point is that what Colombia is doing is not deterring coca farming. In fact you have to wonder whether spraying might even be promoting the dispersion and quickening the pace of replanting,” said John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America, a watchdog organization. Spraying is driving farmers into “new areas and bringing all the bad things that go with it.”

Results called ‘poor’

Rafael Pardo, a former Colombian defense minister, said Colombia’s internal coca monitoring program also shows that spraying isn’t working.

“Whatever figures you use, the results are extremely poor,” Pardo said. “The new focus should be on economic programs to stimulate the planting of other crops and to give economic support to the farmers. But the programs are very expensive and would require a lot of international support.”

Uribe said he already has economic programs in place that are providing increasing amounts of economic aid to farmers to induce them to leave coca farming behind. One such program called Families in Action gives 600,000 families a monthly stipend if they keep their children in school. Over the next three months, 900,000 additional families will be added, he said. “We are talking to them to keep their areas free of drugs,” Uribe said.

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chris.kraul@latimes.com