Uribe on the Newshour

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was on the Newshour yesterday and here is his response to accusations put forth in a new book claiming links to paramilitaries:

PRESIDENT ALVARO URIBE: Guerrillas and people from paramilitary groups, and they both are terrorist groups. Their actions are pure... are sheer terrorist. In the past when the army was not effective against guerrillas, many people in Colombia thought the army was in collusion with guerrillas; there are - there have been isolated cases, isolated cases of collusion with paramilitaries. But my government needs transparency.

RAY SUAREZ: That transparency, says Uribe, will lead to justice for all offenders. Uribe's alleged paramilitary links are also documented in an unauthorized biography by Newsweek's Joseph Contreres. Written in Spanish, the book says Uribe, as a provincial official in the 1990s, presided over civilian massacres by paramilitaries. And the book reports Uribe once had direct ties to the late drug lord Pablo Escobar. Many bookstores have reportedly received threatening calls not to sell the Contreres book.

RAY SUAREZ: Are some of the things that he's written about past associations, when you were in government as a younger man, is there any truth to them?

PRESIDENT ALVARO URIBE: Ah, please, please, this is not a time of my campaign. Please. I... I cannot devote time to discuss gossips, to discuss adventures of journalists. I have to work seriously to overcome the problems of my country. Now when you have the possibility to destroy drugs in Colombia, you cannot leave the war halfway, you have to fulfill the aim... and a guarantee for the American people that we will fulfill the aim is our determination.

Not exactly a strong, unambiguous and unequivocal denial, is it? I can't help but find this disturbing.

Comments

[akaky]

as a denial it's right up there with chico marx's "who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"