US aid to Colombia

[romy]

'First peek at the Obama administration’s 2010 aid request'
From CIP
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=848

[Judi Lynn]

1. Thanks for posting the new Colombia budget information.

First time to see it. Hope the cuts will be more significant next year. This is far better than the direction _{George W. Bush} was going, however.

Welcome to D.U., romy. :hi:

[Judi Lynn]

2. Apparently the U.K. will be cutting its aid to Colombia due to human rights crimes:

Columbia and Extrajudicial Killings Scandal
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
By Lee Jay Walker
Tokyo Correspondent

The government of Colombia which is supported by the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, and others, is now in the spotlight because of the continuing grisly finds of dead corpses. The killings have been carried out by sections of the armed forces and it is a grim reminder of events in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and other nations throughout the region, with regards to events in the 1970s and 1980s.

If this scandal had happened in modern day Cuba or Venezuela, then America, Canada, the United Kingdom, and others, would be the first to call for "a major enquiry" and more severe action would be taken. However, for all the above named nations, then it is complex because they have supported the current government of Colombia. So how will these nations respond to the government of President Alvaro Uribe?

It would appear that "cracks are emerging" because the British government is alarmed by recent events. For example, David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, stated that "The challenge for the Colombian government is to ensure the strategic human rights principles we have helped to promote are embedded and consistently practiced by all members of their armed services."

Therefore, the British government will divert part of its military aid because of the gross violations of human rights in Colombia. Alan Campbell, from the British Home Office, said that aid would not be given to any areas which had links to the "false positives." This applies to the extrajudicial killings in Colombia; however, can the British government be assured that the "chain"in this scandal is so limited?

More:
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=8368