A recently declassified US intelligence report from 1991 says that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, now a staunch ally in Washington's war against drug trafficking, was at that time a close associate of Colombia's most powerful drug lord and an ardent ally of the cocaine traffickers then engulfing this country.
A spokesman for Uribe denounced the findings in the Defense Intelligence Agency's 13-year-old report on Colombia's biggest drug traffickers as "the same information" presented in a smear campaign by political opponents in the 2002 presidential election. And senior US intelligence officials and diplomats cautioned that such reports might not be accurate. However, the statement issued by the presidential spokesman did not directly address the report's most damaging assertion: That Uribe was linked to the top drug kingpin of the era, Pablo Escobar.
The report, dated Sept. 23, 1991, and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archives, a private, nonpartisan research group based in Washington, says that Uribe, then a senator from the northern state of Antioquia, was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels."
The report, which the archives made public yesterday, called Uribe a "close personal friend" of the cartel's leader, Escobar, and says Uribe took part in the drug lord's successful efforts to secure a seat as an auxiliary congressman. It said Uribe was linked to an unidentified business involved in narcotics activities in the US, that as a senator he opposed extraditing traffickers to the US and that his father, Alberto Uribe, was killed because of his drug ties.
In response to inquiries by The New York Times, Ricardo Galan, a spokesman for Alvaro Uribe, issued an eight-point response on Friday that said the Defense Intelligence Agency report had been of a preliminary nature. The statement said that in 1991 Uribe was studying at Harvard and that he had never had business dealings in the US.
The statement also said Uribe's father had been killed while trying to resist Marxist rebels who aimed to kidnap him. It affirmed Uribe's commitment to extradition, though only loosely explained Uribe's opposition as a senator to a proposed referendum on extradition. It did not address the report's allegation that Uribe participated in the campaign that took Escobar to Congress.
Robert Zimmerman, a State Department spokesman, was more emphatic in denying the report's findings. "We completely disavow these allegations about President Uribe," he said, adding, "We have no credible information that substantiates or corroborates the allegations in an unevaluated 1991 report."
Still, the report is sure to raise new questions about allegations made in 2001 and 2002, when Uribe was campaigning for the presidency, about possible ties to drug dealers, including the powerful Ochoa clan in Medellin, Colombia's drug-trafficking center. Solid evidence was never presented, though, and Uribe won in a landslide based on his pledge that he would fight Marxist rebels and drug traffickers.
The US has strongly supported Uribe since then, and he is considered among the Bush administration's closest allies in its effort to curb drug trafficking.
During his two years in office, much of Colombia's vast drug fields have been eradicated in Washington-financed fumigation efforts. About 150 Colombians accused of drug trafficking have been extradited to the US, more than double the number extradited by Uribe's predecessor during his four-year term.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including