A PLAN by Colombia to allow the US up to seven military bases on its territory has caused uproar in South America, prompting Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe, to undertake a tour through the region to try and reassure neighbours anxious about the move.
Colombian and US negotiators are close to finalising a deal that would give the US three air bases, two military bases, and two naval bases, one each on Colombia’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Colombian officials say the bases would count on a light US military presence that would aid them in their operations against the country’s drug traffickers. Colombia is the world’s biggest producer of cocaine, which has fuelled a decades-long insurgency by left-wing guerrillas.
Leading the opposition to the deal is Venezuela’s left-wing president Hugo Chávez. “They are surrounding Venezuela with military bases,” he said in a televised speech Wednesday.
He said the deal would turn Colombia “into an imperialist base of operations from which Venezuelan sovereignty is threatened”. He announced a full review of relations with its neighbour and said he would buy “several battalions of tanks” from Russia.
Last week Chávez recalled his country’s ambassador in Bogotá after the government there accused Venezuela of supplying arms to the Farc, Colombia’s largest guerrilla group. Venezuela denied the charge.
Even Chile and Brazil, who both have good relations with Colombia and the US, have expressed deep unease about the proposed deal.
After stops in Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay, Mr Uribe was to meet Brazil’s President Lula yesterday in a bid to address Brazilian concerns over the bases.
Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim said at the weekend the country was worried about the proposal as it provided for “a strong military presence whose objective and capacity go much further than Colombia’s internal needs”.
Colombia, the US’s closest ally in the region, has received more than $6 billion in aid from the US since 2000 as part of the anti-drug programme. It has used the cash to beef up its military, which has scored important military victories against the Farc in recent years. But while cocaine production has dropped in Colombia, a recent UN report said traffickers had made up the shortfall by expanding production in neighbouring Peru and Bolivia.
While ostensibly part of Washington’s “war on drugs”, the two naval bases in particular will also give the US a renewed military presence close to the Panama canal, the vital trade artery from which the US military was forced to withdraw in 1999, following the non-renewal of its lease by the Panamanian government.
The deal will also come as the US is winding down its only military base on the continent – Manta in Ecuador. The country’s left-wing president, Rafael Correa, refused to renew its lease and is one of the most strident opponents of Colombia’s plan to provide the US with facilities across the border.