IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST
Lima Bombing Underscores That LaRouche Was Right
When former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was ousted, and replaced by Alejandro Toledo, Lyndon LaRouche and his associates at EIR and in Peru stressed that this change portended disaster. As Lyndon LaRouche charged was intended, the dismantling of the state intelligence and security apparatus in the name of a "democracy" bought and paid for by George Soros, is handing the country back to narcoterrorism.
Less than three days before President George W. Bush's scheduled visit there, a car bomb exploded at 10:45 p.m. March 20 in a shopping mall directly across from the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, killing nine, and wounding at least 30 others. The explosion set off a shockwave of 300-meter radius, knocking out the windows of a nearby hotel where many of Bush's large security advance team were already lodging. Some three hours later, an emergency was declared around the Hotel Marriott, where Bush is to stay, after an abandoned car was noticed. (Apparently, a false alarm.)
No group took responsibility for the car bombing, the first in many years in Peru. Unnamed U.S. intelligence officials and a former Peruvian anti-terror chief, Gen. John Caro, told the media they believed the attack to be the work of Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path"). Sendero, reduced to a few holdouts in the jungle by the Fujimori government, has been reactivating its networks under the Toledo government, particularly in the coca-growing regions.
That the bombing could occur where it did, and under supposedly top security conditions, is a devastating indictment of the Toledo government, which is held up by the Bush team (among many others) as a model of how free trade and "reformist democracy" bring stability. The exact opposite is true.
One wonders about the wisdom of the security officials and others who permitted President Bush to go ahead with his visit to Lima March 23, going into such an extraordinarily dangerous situation.
Assassination of Colombian Archbishop Shakes the Country
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cali, Colombia was assassinated at close range on the evening of March 16, as he left a church after celebrating a wedding mass. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the murder of Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino, but the Archbishop was an outspoken opponent of the drug trade and narcoterrorists of all ideologies. Right before Colombia's March 10 election, he had issued a call for Colombians to vote against anyone involved in the drug trade, be they left or rightwing.
The murder of the Archbishop as he left a church in one of Colombia's biggest cities, has shaken the country, and the Roman Catholic Church generally. In his address to pilgrims in St. Peter's Square March 17, Pope John Paul II called the murder "barbaric," and said this "generous and brave pastor" had "paid the highest price for his energetic defense of human life, his firm opposition to all types of violence, and his dedication to the social good."
President Andres Pastrana presided over an emergency security council meeting in Cali, and announced a reward for information leading to the capture of the authors of the crime. The Mayor of Cali, John Maro Rodriguez, said Colombia had hit "rock bottom" with this murder, and added that it is therefore important to do more than capture the killers (described as two 20-year-olds)--it is necessary to identify who ordered the killing.
U.S. Government Indicts FARC Members for Drug-Trafficking
In a move that signals the ongoing shift of the Bush Administration toward recognizing the threat of narcoterrorism, the U.S. government on March 18 indicted three members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), including the head of its 16th Front, for drug-trafficking. Indicted were Tomas Molina Caracas (alias "El Negro Acacio"), head of the 16th Front, and six others, three of them Brazilian nationals. Only one of the indicted is in custody: Luiz Fernando da Costa, known by his mafia nickname, "Fernandinho Beira Mar," who is jailed in Brazil. The U.S. is requesting the capture and extradition of the rest (all of whom are believed to be in Colombia), along with the forfeiture of all proceeds of their trafficking.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who made the annnouncement with Drug Enforcement Administration Asa Hutchison at his side, made clear that these indictments are a hit at the FARC as a whole, not just the specific individuals named:
"Today's indictment charges leaders of the FARC not as revolutionaries or freedom-fighters, but as drug-traffickers. The world's largest producer of cocaine and the source of 90% of the cocaine Americans consume is Colombian. For the past two decades, the FARC has controlled large areas of Colombia's eastern and southern lowlands and rain forest, the primary coca cultivation and cocaine-processing regions in the country. Today's indictment strikes at the heart of the terrorism/drug-trafficking nexus by charging that members of the FARC created a, quote, 'safe haven' for drug-traffickers in Colombia." Their cocaine was exchanged for weapons.
According to the indictment, Ashcroft continued, "from their base in Barranco Minas ... the 16th Front processed cocaine, collected cocaine from other FARC fronts, and sold it to international drug-traffickers for payment in currency, weapons and equipment. Molina and his co-conspirators loaded airplanes with cocaine in Barranco Minas," many of these loads destined for the United States.
The FARC indictment came off a multi-year operation ("Operation Black Cat") involving U.S., Brazilian, and Colombian forces. Collaboration between these three nations was key to the arrest of Luiz da Costa, the "Pablo Escobar of Brazil," in April 2001; he is key to the case against the FARC. It also led to the seizure of documents which proved that the drug business is "led and managed" by the FARC, "under the leadership of its secretariat."
The Colombian military turned the documents seized in Operation Black Cat over to U.S. Justice Department officials.
LaRouche Associate in Colombia Endorses Gen. Bedoya
Maximiliano Londono, head of the Colombian branch of the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement, Lyndon LaRouche's associates in Ibero-America, issued a statement March 19, calling on Colombian patriots to support Gen. (retd) Harold Bedoya in the Presidential round of elections, scheduled for May. Londono, who serves as Bedoya's economic adviser, gave the following reasons why Bedoya should be supported:
*Bedoya was one of the first to recognize and denounce the FARC as the "Third Cartel" of cocaine.
*Bedoya has denounced the alliance of Wall Street with the narcoterrorists, which is captured in the infamous photograph of the "Grasso Abrazo," showing New York Stock Exchange head Richard Grasso, who had travelled to the FARC-controlled demilitarized zone, embracing the FARC's so-called "Commander" Raul Reyes; the purpose of Grasso's trip was to coordinate "mutual investments."
*Bedoya has denounced the IMF for wanting to include drug crops as part of the Gross National Product, and for imposing austerity policies that are destroying Colombia and the world.
*Bedoya proposes great infrastructure, agricultural, and industrial development projects to reactivate our economy, and recognizes the need to reorganize the international financial system, as LaRouche has proposed.
Peruvian Daily Prints EIR Column on Narcoterror and Bankers
"War against Narco-Communism: the Grasso Factor" was the headline of the column by EIR correspondent Sara Madueno published on March 6 in Peru's largest-circulation daily, Expreso.
"If there really exists the political will in the Colombian and U.S. governments to end the narcoterrorism of the FARC and others," she wrote, "then the war against it should not be waged only upon the military battlefield. It is the Bush government's responsibility to attack the FARC's principal protectors, who are not in Colombia, but in the United States itself: on Wall Street. The FARC could not have become the largest cocaine cartel in the world, nor the principal narcoterrorist force in the Americas, without the support--political, financial, and military--of the financiers from Wall Street and London, who are carrying out a new Opium War against all the Americas. If this support is cut, and adequate support is given to Colombia's own Armed Forces, this country could crush the FARC."
Expreso, which at the end of last year had been running weekly columns by EIR's correspondent, began running occasional columns again on Feb. 8, with an article on LaRouche's call for the United States, and the rest of the world's nations, to renew the fight to "Continue the American Revolution!" as the way out of the present world crisis.
Bush Says 'No, No, No, No' to Sending Troops to Colombia
Contrary to the implication left by Attorney General John Ashcroft during his March 18 press conference on the FARC indictments (see above), President Bush took a strong stand when asked by a Telemundo interviewer March 21, if we are closer to seeing U.S. troops in Colombia. "No, no, no, no," the President said. "I don't see any role beyond advising and training," he said. The U.S. "will help [the Colombians] help themselves," in fighting the terrorists--Bush cited the FARC by name--which have taken over half the country.
The Administration has not yet officially requested a change in current Congressional rules on aid to Colombia, to permit the aid to be used in counter-terrorist operations.
Monterrey 'Development' Conference Means No Such Thing
The United Nations International Conference on Financing of Development, held in Monterrey, Mexico between March 18 and 22, purported to launch a "new compact for global development." In fact, the "new compact" rested on two rotten principles which will make the situation for developing (and other) countries much worse: first, the demand for an expansion of free trade, and elimination of barriers against exports from the world's poor countries (despite the recent U.S. decision to impose tariffs on steel); and second, the launching of a series of outright grants to poor countries, contingent on a new set of conditionalities such as "transparency, good governance, human rights, and the rule of law."
Fifty heads of state came together at this conference to agree on the "consensus draft" outlining these principles. The keynote, of course, was struck by U.S. President George W. Bush, who laid out the U.S. contribution as a "Millennium Challenge Account" of $5-$10 billion (over three years, 2004-06); the U.S. contribution in the year 2006, an additional $5 billion over current U.S. donation levels, is a major increase for the generally pathetic amount of U.S. foreign aid, at present at $10-11 billion/year. But this money, Bush made clear, will be gained by "competition between countries to put the right policies and programs in place," White House officials said, particularly policies of free trade ("economic freedom") and "good governance."
Argentina Is Bowing Down Before the IMF Again
The bankrupt Argentine government is still desperately seeking to propitiate the International Monetary Fund, in hopes of getting international approval, and a bailout which has not even been promised. Meanwhile, the country's economic situation worsens by the day, with bank accounts still frozen, and consumption, production, and the peso dropping like stones.
In response to IMF pressure, President Eduardo Duhalde has now promised to change Argentine law in order to protect bankers from the prosecutions for capital flight and other illegal activity, which they are now undergoing. The IMF had demanded these changes, in the name of "juridical security."
Secondly, the government has let it be known that it intends to "reverse the default" which had been announced last December, and resume debt payments later in the year. According to Argentine newspapers of March 12, Finance Ministry officials fantasize that if an agreement with the Fund is signed by April--the IMF made clear this isn't likely--they will move to the second phase of the debt swap begun by former Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo, this time with foreign creditors, with a write-down possibly as high as 50%. The idea is then to launch an international "road show" to present foreign creditors with a variety of options for debt repayment. "Before the end of the year, therefore, Argentina will have abandoned the default," the Finance Ministry blithely predicts.
|