"The visitor is President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, who will claim that his pacification plan for Colombia deserves further support from the British taxpayer and, as his supporters argued at a London conference in June, that the British investor should pitch in to a country that appealingly combines the smack of firm government with a sound commitment to free markets.
Uribe's visit offers the unusual spectacle of a British red carpet being rolled out for a man who, as mayor of Medellin, the drug barons' "sanctuary", allegedly accepted funds from the notorious trafficker Pablo Escobar. Uribe's father, Alberto, was wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges when he was killed in 1983.
Coincidentally, no doubt, Uribe's presidential campaign manager, Pedro Moreno Villa, was named by US customs as the biggest importer of potassium permanganate, a chemical used in cocaine production, between 1994 and 1998, though he insisted it was for innocent purposes; at that time Uribe was governor of Antioquia department, of which Medellin is the capital, and Moreno was his chief of staff. It was there that Uribe also devised his policy of encouraging the armed rightwing terror groups that he now seeks to legitimise.
President Uribe calls his plan Justice and Peace, a fine piece of newspeak which the Colombian Congress approved in June; under it he offers amnesty and cash rewards to rightwing paramilitary fighters, many of whom are guilty of human rights abuses and cocaine trafficking."
Why is our government welcoming and supporting this man?
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