EU urged to protect Colombia ‘peace lab’

Date: 18/04/02

By David Cronin

SPAIN'S EU presidency is being urged to pressurise Washington for guarantees that its war against the Colombian drug trade will not harm a 'peace laboratory' funded by European taxpayers.

Development groups are incensed by US plans to spray illicit plantations of coca - the crop used for cocaine - in the Magdalena Medio region with toxic chemical glyphosate next month.

They believe that action - undertaken as part of 'Plan Colombia', which was devised by the Bogota administration - will forcibly uproot the local population, as well as cause major damage to human health and the environment.

The groups, including Christian Aid, Save the Children and Oxfam, have written to Spanish Prime Minister José-María Aznar, urging the presidency to intervene.

The letter states: 'We urgently request that the EU ask the US and Colombian governments to suspend the planned aerial spraying programme. The EU must not permit its efforts for peace to be annulled by military aid from the USA. A clear 'yes' from Europe to a politically negotiated solution [to the country's long-running civil war] requires a clear and public 'no' to US military involvement in Colombia.'

External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten announced in February that EU funding worth €34.8 million is due to be ploughed into the Magdalena Medio region over an eight-year period.

Patten hopes the money will establish a 'peace laboratory' by helping develop local government, non-governmental organisations and various economic and social projects.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights is due to hold a debate on Colombia in Geneva today (18 April). Activists want the EU delegation to push for the appointment of a UN 'special rapporteur' for Colombia.

Worsening human rights violations have been reported since the Colombian peace process collapsed in February, when President Andrés Pastrana called a halt to three years of talks with Marxist guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

A new paper by the International Office on Human Rights - Action on Colombia (OIDHACO) - blames the US-sponsored aerial spraying programme for the exodus of around 36,000 people from areas of coca production between January and September last year.

Although the EU and US are the main donors to the Latin American state, OIDHACO spokeswoman Britta Madsen described their approaches as 'contradictory'.

She also accused Washington of breaching the conditions attached to its military aid for the Colombian authorities, which state it should not contribute to human rights violations.

Evidence gathered in the Putumayo region suggests some of the aid is being used to benefit paramilitary groups, linked to the state forces.

'The EU should not only take distance from Plan Colombia,' she added. 'It should try to convince the US that their military aid and fumigation is not the right way. It fuels the conflict rather than solves it.'

The European Commission has notified the Bush administration of its concerns about the fumigation plans. A senior EU official said he is 'quite optimistic' they will not encroach on Magdalena Medio.

This view, the official added, is partly based on the growing opposition within the US to the aerial spraying plans: 'At the EU level, we've said publicly we are against fumigation in Colombia and, of course, we are particularly against fumigation of our own projects.'

Spain's EU presidency is being urged to pressurise the US for guarantees that its war against the Colombian drug trade will not harm a 'peace laboratory' funded by European taxpayers.