Dezember 2002
Meinungstribunal zu Coca Cola in Bogotá

'I Have Been Honorable'

An interview with Colombian presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe Velez

Alvaro Uribe Velez is a man with a short fuse. During an hourlong interview with NEWSWEEK's Joseph Contreras in a Bogota hotel suite, the 49-year-old presidential candidate bristled over questions concerning allegations of past and present supporters' links to drug trafficking. Excerpts:

CONTRERAS: You have called for more U.S. military aid to help Colombia fight communist guerrillas as well as drug traffickers.

URIBE: I have supported Plan Colombia from the beginning, but we need to improve it. We also need similar assistance to prevent crimes like terrorism, kidnapping and massacres. Our natural ally in this area is the United States. We're not speaking of soldiers. We are talking about [more] helicopters, trainers, technology and money.

C: What is your counternarcotics strategy?

U: The armed forces estimate that 20 planes carrying cocaine fly out of Colombia daily. Without [the resumption of] interdiction flights, Plan Colombia will fail. The fight against drugs must also include a social component for the farmers who plant coca and opium poppies. I am proposing an agreement with 50,000 peasant families that would give them between $2,000 and $2,500 a year, provided they stop raising drug crops.

C: Three years of peace talks with Colombia's largest guerrilla army yielded no results. How will your government deal with the guerrillas?

U: I don't rule out negotiations. But the guerrillas will have to accept a ceasefire and make a commitment to refrain from terrorist activity as preconditions.

C: The U.S. State Department added Colombia's 8,000-strong right-wing militias to its list of terrorist groups last year. What policy would your government adopt toward those outlawed forces?

U:The same as the policy toward the guerrillas.

C: As governor of Antioquia state in the mid-1990s, you promoted the creation of civilian vigilante organizations known as Convivir, and human-rights groups say that some of them later cooperated with paramilitary units. Do you regret that policy?

U: We needed to organize civilians in support of security forces, and none of the Convivir groups in my state deteriorated into illegal paramilitary forces. There were problems with two of them, and I immediately suspended their operations.

C: Some Colombians regard you as the preferred candidate of the paramilitary groups.

U: I have never met any members of either the paramilitary forces or the guerrillas. [Paramilitary leader] Carlos Castano has clearly said he does not know me. I once met [paramilitary supremo ] Salvatore Mancuso many years ago when he was a cattle rancher but have not spoken with him since he became a paramilitary member.

C: But many years ago when you...

U: I won't answer that. If I have links to the paramilitary groups, file a complaint with the appropriate authorities.

C: Questions have been raised about some of your political allies. The U.S. State Department rescinded the visa of Sen. Fuad Char because he was suspected of laundering money.

U: Fuad Char voted in favor of permitting the extradition of drug traffickers wanted in the United States. Fuad Char is an honorable man in his public and private lives.

C: In 1997 and 1998, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] seized 50,000 kilos of a chemical precursor used in the processing of cocaine. Those chemicals had been allegedly purchased by a company belonging to Pedro Juan Moreno, who served as your cabinet chief when you were governor of Antioquia.

U: I became aware of that only after my term as governor ended. If the charges are true, he should go to jail. If they are groundless, the DEA should rectify that error. I believe that an error was made in his case.

C: According to a best-selling book about the drug trade entitled "The Jockeys of Cocaine," you spoke out on behalf of a low-income housing program in Medellin that was funded by drug lord Pablo Escobar when you were mayor of that city in 1982...

U: I asked the attorney general's office to investigate that matter, and I was completely cleared of those charges. That housing program was well underway when I became mayor. I had nothing to do with that.

C: Well-informed sources say that a record number of pilot's licenses and airstrip construction permits were issued by the civil-aviation authority when you headed that agency in the 1980s, a period when drug trafficking was on the rise...

U: Let's not talk further. I see that you have come here to smear my political career.

C: Your deputy at the aviation authority was a man named Cesar Villegas, later sentenced to five years in prison or his links to the Cali cartel and murdered earlier this month...

U: I refuse to accept that you foreign correspondents come here to ask me these kinds of questions and repeat slanders made against me. All I say is this: as a politician, I have been honorable and accountable. We have nothing else to discuss.

(Quelle: NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL, March 25 2002)