Colombia seeks more U.S., European aid
Mon 29 Jan 2007 23:06:56 GMT
By Patrick Markey
BOGOTA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Colombia will ask the United States and Europe this week for military cooperation and more economic aid to help consolidate gains against Marxist rebels and the cocaine trade, a top official said on Monday.
President Alvaro Uribe, Washington's staunchest South American ally, has reduced violence from Colombia's four-decade conflict by sending troops to retake areas under guerrilla control and demobilizing 31,000 rightist militia fighters accused of atrocities in a dirty war waged against the rebels.
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The Andean country produces around 600 tonnes a year of the drug, most of which ends up on the streets of the United States and Europe.
Despite military gains made by Uribe, critics say he has not done enough to develop social projects in impoverished areas hardest hit by the conflict or to provide coca leaf cultivators with viable options to the illicit cash crop.
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http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N29236249&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-6
Cha-ching. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Colombian painter, Fernando Botero:
Abu Ghraib's horrific images drove artist Fernando Botero into action
Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic
Monday, January 29, 2007
Fernando Botero must number among the most famous painters alive.
Even people unaware of his name know his manner of giving doughboy features to everything in his paintings and sculpture, from people and animals to automobiles and fruit.
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"The whole world and myself were very shocked that the Americans were torturing prisoners in the same prison as the tyrant they came to remove," he said. "The United States presents itself as a defender of human rights and of course as an artist I was very shocked with this and angry. The more I read, the more I was motivated. ... I think Seymour Hersh's article was the first one I read. I was on a plane and I took a pencil and paper and started drawing. Then I got to my studio and continued with oil paintings. I studied all the material I could. It didn't make sense to copy, I was just trying to visualize what was really happening there."
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His New York gallery, which presented the Abu Ghraib work for the first time in the United States, received some hate mail for its trouble, some visitors evidently perceiving the work as anti-American.
"Anti-American it's not," Botero said emphatically. "Anti-brutality, anti-inhumanity, yes. I follow politics very closely. I read several newspapers every day. And I have a great admiration for this country. I'm sure the vast majority of people here don't approve of this. And the American press is the one that told the world this is going on. You have freedom of the press that makes such a thing possible."
No one can accuse Botero of trying to profit from his Abu Ghraib pictures, at least not directly.
"They are absolutely not for sale," he said.
Instead, he has offered to give them to any museum that will commit to keeping some of them on view at all times. Perhaps that, as much as their content, has led to occasional imputations of anti-American sentiments.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/29/DDGF2NPRO91.DTL![](http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2007/01/29/dd_boter29040.jpg)