Bishop says US strategy will intensify conflict in Colombia

The chairman of Trocaire, Bishop John Kirby, has said US strategy in Colombia to cut off the cocaine supply would only intensify the conflict there and strengthen the guerrillas. In an open letter he called on President Clinton "to review at the earliest possible moment" US support for "the so-called Plan Colombia".

Dr Kirby said he was also writing "in the context of your signing of a waiver of the human rights conditions attached to the US support for Plan Colombia".

He recalled President Clinton's apology in March 1999 for US interventions in Central America when he said "support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression was wrong. And the United States must not repeat that mistake."

The apology made it "all the more difficult to understand why you are now giving support to a plan which your advisers believe will end coca production in Colombia and bring guerrilla groups to their knees, but which will in reality have no chance of achieving these ends", Dr Kirby said.

It would "bring death and destruction to poor rural communities, increase environmental damage, and make it more difficult to achieve a peaceful settlement in Colombia's war".

The decision to waive all human rights requirements in the situation was difficult to understand given the proven links between the Colombian military and paramilitary death squads which continued to murder innocent people and force communities from their homes, he said.

An example of more than 400 massacres in the country was the experience of a small community in La Union where two massacres had taken place since February and which remained threatened "despite the presence of Peace Brigades International and Fat her Brendan Forde, an Irish Franciscan missionary priest", he said.

"Trocaire cannot see any hope of promoting dialogue while intensifying the conflict," he said. Praising President Clinton for his peace efforts in Ireland and East Timor, he urged him to find "alternative ways of bringing peace to that troubled country".