Analysis: Venezuela expands influence
By CARMEN GENTILE UPI Energy Correspondent MIAMI, Jan. 30 (UPI) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently announced his country’s decision
Read MoreBy CARMEN GENTILE UPI Energy Correspondent MIAMI, Jan. 30 (UPI) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently announced his country’s decision
Read MorePart I
The Colombia Card is Being Played, with Chávez Scheduled to be Taken to the Cleaner. Meanwhile, Rice heads today to Medellin with Democratic legislators in tow, to win approval of controversial FTA with Bogotá
• A prime weapon in the U.S. inventory to reduce Chávez to size, and build up Colombia’s President Uribe, is a recent government-funded report produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which claims that the South American nation, Colombia, is safely “back from the brink of crisis.” But in terms of its conceptualization and implementation, the contracted document and the campaign surrounding its publication raises serious questions. These include the conservative organization’s objectivity due to its longtime advocacy of Plan Colombia, and its vigorous support of the pending free trade pact with Bogotá.
• The CSIS Colombia project is more about being part of a well-timed public relations campaign than about bona fide research.
• The CSIS report represents an important component in the lobbying effort by Bogotá and the Bush administration to convince Capitol Hill to approve the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, and is based as much on half truths and strategic omissions as it is on value-neutral research.
• If anything, it could be argued that Colombia’s prospects for modernization and stability and its credentials as a voracious foe of regional drug trafficking have at best stagnated, and at worst have suffered grave attrition, under the Uribe administration. The discarding of extradition for demobilized paramilitaries is an example of this.
• Uribe is lionized by State Department, but is a doubly tainted figure
• The Bush administration relates a fading tale to Democrats over Colombia’s demure virtues
Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, on her way to Medellin, Colombia today, leading a delegation of ten Democratic House members, has the mission of rewarding one of Latin America’s most hardline leaders who has had direct links to some of the country’s most prominent right-wing death squad leaders and has indirectly sanctified the possible assassination of prominent labor and human rights leaders, even though U.S. legislators are well aware of the impunity for such crimes that exist.
In spite of multiple legislative delegation that have been ferried to Colombia and several trips of Uribe to Washington, the Congressional leadership remains unconvinced that President Uribe is not the soaring paladin of democracy as the Bush administration tries to present him.
Read More• Guyana and Venezuela’s longstanding territorial dispute: the “frozen conflict,” which is asleep for now and hopefully forever
• Will Guyana’s Jagdeo become Washington’s new best friend on the continent?
The latest confrontation between Venezuela and Guyana, which indisputably took place on Guyanese territory, has reminded Washington that Guyana exists and that complexities abound for the long troubled nation which is located in one of the South America’s hot spots. The recent clash, which briefly revived the border dispute long bedeviling the two nations’, has pushed Washington into approaching Georgetown in a less cautious, and more engaged, effort in order to gain its friendship at the hoped for expense of Washington’s most determined regional adversary, Hugo Chavez. The recent meeting between Guyanese and American military officials over defense issues may very well put Guyana’s weakened leader, President Bharrat Jagdeo ultimately in an untenable position where he may have to reluctantly pick sides, even though most specialists dismiss the recent Georgetown visit of high U.S. naval officials as nothing more than a coincidence involving a long-scheduled event.
Read MoreCSIS’ Predictable Colombia Project COHA will shortly release an overview of what it sees as possible conceptual shortcomings in the
Read MoreBy CARMEN GENTILE UPI Energy Correspondent MIAMI, Dec. 19 (UPI) — A Soviet-era oil refinery in Cuba is getting back
Read MoreToday, December 14, 2007, from 12:45 to 2:00pm COHA Director, Larry Birns, will Appear on the Fox Business Channel from Washington to Discuss the Bank of the South and other U.S.-Latin American Trade Matters
With much of Latin America demonstrating a decisively distinct air of autonomous behavior when it comes to responding to U.S. regional policy initiatives, Guyana appears to want to emphasize that it should not be counted in their number. A high-level security conference between the U.S. and Guyana was kicked off on Tuesday December 11, just after the recent revival of a long simmering territorial dispute between Guyana and the Bush Administration’s arch nemesis, Venezuela. The conference was organized by the Guyana Defense Force and the U.S. Embassy’s Military Liaison Office, and is being held against a backdrop of heightened tension between Venezuela and Guyana over the November 15 incident in which the Guyanese government claims that Venezuelan soldiers used explosives and helicopters to destroy two dredges along the Cuyuni River. The Venezuelan government maintains that it was doing nothing more than expelling illegal miners from Venezuelan territory.
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