FARC rebels blamed for deadly Bogota bombing

Colombian officials are blaming the FARC guerrilla group for an explosion in an upscale Bogota neighborhood Tuesday night that killed two people and wounded 20.
President Alvaro Uribe, who is in France, issued a statement expressing sorrow for "the new terrorist attempt against Bogota" and accusing FARC of hypocrisy for talking about human rights while setting off lethal bombs.
FARC, the Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is the largest and oldest revolutionary group in Colombia.
"Let us always remember that Bogota cries but will never give up," Uribe's statement said.
The blast occurred around 9 p.m. at a Blockbuster video rental store in an exclusive neighborhood in northern Bogota, causing major damage to the building, most notably the parking lot. Debris was scattered for more than a block, and nearby buildings and cars also were damaged.
Senior presidential aide Fabio Valencia Cossio said 11 pounds of explosives were used, El Espactador newspaper reported.
A female passer-by and the store's parking lot attendant were killed in the blast, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told the newspaper. Another newspaper, El Tiempo, said the woman was about 25 years old and was carrying notebooks and books, so authorities believe she was a university student.
Police said they were looking into a tip that the bombing might have been part of a FARC extortion attempt, said Radio Caracol, citing presidential aide Valencia.
Blockbuster has been complaining to authorities for months that criminals who said they were associated with FARC had been demanding money, news reports said.
In his statement from France, Uribe referred to FARC "combining extortion with terror."
There was an explosion at another Blockbuster store in the Colombian capital a year ago.
Authorities are offering the equivalent of $50,000 for information that would lead to an arrest.
The explosion occurred in an neighborhood known for posh restaurants and nightclubs.
Ricardo Serrano described to El Tiempo how he felt a loud explosion and the immediate confusion that ensued.
"People were running from one place to another," he told the newspaper. "There were a lot of sirens and police."
Angel Alberto Arias, a doorman at a nearby building, told El Tiempo, "I felt like the whole building was going to come down on top of me."
FARC has about 9,000 to 12,000 armed guerillas and several thousand supporters, mostly in rural areas, according to security analysts.
The guerrilla group was established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party.
The guerrillas operate mostly in Colombia but have carried out extortion, kidnappings and other activities in Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador, according to the Federation of American Scientists Intelligence Resource Program.

Bush Hands Out His Last, Heartfelt Medals of Freedom

President George W. Bush handed out his last and perhaps most heartfelt batch of Presidential Medals of Freedom, honoring three of his staunchest allies – former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Australian PM John Howard, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

“Each of these gentlemen we honor today has his own style and personality, and each has amassed distinctions and achievements that belong to him alone,” Bush said, in an East Room ceremony. “Yet all of them have shown a firm adherence to the principles of freedom and democratic values, and a willingness to face problems squarely instead of passing them on to others. They’re the sort of guys who look you in the eye and tell you the truth and keep their word. In lengthy service they proved to be leaders of character and fortitude. They are warm friends of the United States of America. The opportunity to know them and work with them has been among the great satisfactions of my time as President. I respect them and I admire them.”

Of Blair, he said, “My friend was there, indeed, after America was attacked on September the 11th, 2001…. At his very center, this man believes in freedom – freedom from oppression, freedom from hunger, freedom from disease, and freedom from fear and despair.”

Of Howard, Bush said, “He’s a man of honesty and moral clarity. He can make a decision, he can defend it, and he stands his ground. That’s why I called him a Man of Steel. In the character of John Winston Howard we see that fine Australian spirit of `standing by your mates.’”

Of Uribe, Bush said, “By refusing to allow the land he loves to be destroyed by an enemy within, by proving that terror can be opposed and defeated, President Uribe has reawakened the hopes of his countrymen and shown a model of leadership to a watching world.”

The Medal of Freedom was begun by President Harry S. Truman after World War II, to reward heads of state and other high-ranking allies. It fell into disuse but then was revived by President John F. Kennedy in an expanded form that opened the medal up to artists, scientists, activists, religious leaders, businesspeople, and media figures. In effect, it made the U.S. president an arbiter of culture. Among Bush’s numerous choices, he has previously honored such diverse figures as B.B. King, the blues guitarist; Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and political leader; Paul Ruse, the Kigali hotel manager who’s portrayed in “Hotel Rwanda”; Roberto Clemente, the late baseball hero; former First Lady Nancy Reagan; and former GM Chairman Roger Smith.

It's Confirmed! Shakira Will Sing for Obama

The Colombian songstress joins a long line of A-listers--including Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, Garth Brooks and Stevie Wonder--for a jampacked event dubbed We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. The celebration will be free and open to the public on Sunday, January 18, but those who can't make it out to D.C., fret not: HBO is broadcasting the event from 7:00-9:00pm ET.

Colombian Coffee Growers Withdraw Cartoonist Lawsuit

Colombia's coffee growers federation has dropped its lawsuit against U.S. cartoonist Mike Peters, according to a Web story Tuesday by Colombia Reports.

The federation had threatened a $20 million lawsuit after its Juan Valdéz coffee brand had been an innocuous punchline in Peters' “Mother Goose and Grimm” strip on Jan. 2.

The coffee growers accepted Peters’ apology, which he voiced immediately when news of the lawsuit broke. The federation claimed the syndicated cartoonist had insulted Colombia's national dignity and would seek not just an economic compensation, but also “moral compensation. A public manifestation," federation director Gabriel Silva said during a press conference last week.

The cartoonist met with representatives of the coffee growers. The Pulitzer Prize winner reportedly was invited to visit Colombia's coffee region and see for himself how the coffee is grown.

conflict over cartoon

Colombian coffee growers are planning to sue a US cartoonist for millions of dollars over a cartoon they say damages the reputation of Colombian coffee.

The cartoon is by Mike Peters, whose work is published in the US and abroad.

In it, one character refers to crime in Colombia and then to Juan Valdez, the fictional coffee grower used for years to advertise Colombian coffee.

Coffee growers say the cartoon links their industry with violence. Mr Peters has said he intended no offence.

The cartoon strip which appeared on 2 January is part of the Mother Goose and Grimm series that Mr Peters draws.

In it, Mother Goose is sighing over a cup of fresh Colombian coffee. Another character comments: "Y'know, there's a big crime syndicate in Colombia. So when they say there's a little bit of Juan Valdez in every can, maybe they're not kidding." This plays on a former slogan used to advertise Colombian coffee. The comic strip finishes with Mother Goose drinking tea.

National dignity Colombia's National Coffee Growers' Federation, Fedecafe, said they had instructed their lawyers in the US to begin proceedings against Mr Peters and the agency which distributes his work, for "damage and harm, detriment to intellectual property and defamation".

In a statement, Fedecafe said the cartoon "associated organised crime and the atrocities committed by violent groups with the hard, delicate and honest work of more than 500,000 coffee growers and their families".

The cartoon also affected the reputation of Juan Valdez, the "icon and symbol" of Colombian coffee, by suggesting that there was a connection between coffee tins and the victims of violence, Fedecafe said.

The iconic coffee grower, accompanied by his faithful mule, was created in 1959, and has appeared in countless TV advertisements, in the US and elsewhere. The federation said they would expect coffee growers to be adequately compensated for damage caused.

Humorous subject Gabriel Silva Lujan, Fedecafe's general manager, told reporters in Bogota that the cartoon "was an attack on national dignity and the reputation of Colombian coffee." He said he expected the lawsuit to be filed by the end of the week and would be for at least $20m (£13m).

Mr Peters has said that he loves Colombia, drinks Colombian coffee and did not intend any offence. "The cartoon is meant to be read along with the rest of the week as a series of which the theme is based on the fact that the inventor of the Pringles can had his ashes buried in one," Mr Peters said in a statement, reported by the Associated Press.

"I thought this was a humorous subject and all my Mother Goose and Grimm cartoons are meant to make people laugh. I truly intended no insult."

President Uribe: Third term?

Álvaro Uribe was 7 years old when he announced to his family that he intended to become president of Colombia. Fifty years later, in the eyes of many, he is the man who rescued his beleaguered nation from collapse.

When he was inaugurated in 2002, Latin America's oldest and largest Communist insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was strong enough to lob mortars at the presidential palace during the ceremony. Right-wing paramilitary groups were rampaging through the countryside killing suspected rebel supporters. Mr. Uribe soon put the FARC on the run, and consequently persuaded the paramilitaries to disarm. The dividend for his countrymen: an economic boom.

But lately Mr. Uribe's political narrative is taking some complex twists. He has refused to rule out running for a third term, which isn't allowed under Colombian law. He and his supporters are working to change the law. Critics claim he is morphing into a familiar figure in Latin American politics -- the caudillo, or strongman.

Halfway through his second term, scandals are piling up. Nearly a fifth of Colombia's Congress -- nearly all supporters of the president and including his cousin -- are under investigation or in jail for allegedly receiving campaign money and other support from illegal paramilitary groups. In the past month, a dozen military brass were implicated in a scheme to murder civilians and dress up them up as rebel combatants to pump up body counts, presumably to please their hard-charging commander in chief.

Many in Bogotá and Washington say a third term could risk Mr. Uribe's legacy.
"If he had quit at the end of his first term, he would have been a national hero with no questions asked," says Guillermo Perry, a Colombian who was the former chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank. "If he quits at the end of his second term, he'll still be a national hero, but with some questions. If he keeps going, he risks not being seen as a national hero."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, an anti-American crusader, recently announced that he wants to stay in power indefinitely. The prospect that Mr. Uribe is moving in a similar direction could emerge as a foreign-policy headache for President-elect Barack Obama. Mr. Uribe, who can recite the Gettysburg Address by heart, has been the most steadfast U.S. ally in Latin America, and has received considerable U.S. backing. A conservative, he has preached democratic values and offers a regional counterweight to the man in Caracas.

Mr. Uribe hasn't gutted democratic institutions as Mr. Chávez has. But he hasn't groomed any successor, and his administration is largely a one-man show. He micromanages the country to such an extent that he even checks the bathroom stalls of provincial airports when he arrives on state business. Critics say he cannot tolerate dissent. "He represents an old feature of Latin America, but something new to Colombia -- an authoritarian, a caudillo," says César Gaviria, a former president.

Latin America has suffered greatly from strongmen since its independence from Spain -- from Argentina's Juan Perón to Chile's Augusto Pinochet to Cuba's Fidel Castro. Over the past two decades, democracy has spread throughout the region. But lingering poverty, corruption and crime have spurred voters in some countries to elect authoritarian figures who promise to end problems forcefully, threatening democratic institutions in the process.

"A third term doesn't set a good precedent, particularly when you have neighbors like Chávez trying to do the same thing," says a U.S. administration official.

In a local radio interview in March, Mr. Uribe played coy about his re-election intentions. "We seek to assure the re-election of [our security policies] and investor confidence," he said.
Mr. Uribe's advisers compare the situation to the U.S. during the Depression and World War II, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times. The FARC still has 9,000 men under arms. "Our country is still at war, and we need to finish the job," says Vice President Francisco Santos.
Mr. Uribe is a trim, bookish lawyer who wears spectacles and is said to look like an older Harry Potter. He begins his day well before 5 a.m. and often doesn't end it until after midnight, leaving a trail of exhausted aides in his wake. To maintain his energy, he exercises regularly, practices qigong, a Chinese breathing exercise, yoga and homeopathic medicine. "His energy comes from the purity of his desire to serve his country," says Elsa Arango, his homeopathic doctor.

There are two sides to Mr. Uribe. He is a technocrat who studied at Harvard and Oxford and works on his English by watching the BBC every morning as he rides his stationary bike. In 2005, Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive officer of General Electric Co., visited Colombia after hearing about its turnaround under Mr. Uribe. After a two-hour meeting with the president, Mr. Immelt told associates: "Now that is a chief executive."

The other side comes from being raised in a rural culture of powerful landowners, horses and guns. Mr. Uribe sometimes views the world in black and white, such as in his treatment of Carlos Lozano, who edits the weekly Communist Party newspaper La Voz. On several occasions, Mr. Uribe has publicly attacked the editor as a FARC supporter -- dangerous words in a nation where right-wing death squads have killed thousands of leftists. After each outburst, says Mr. Lozano, Vice President Santos "calls to say the president lost his temper, is sorry about what he said, and is increasing my bodyguards and the strength of the bulletproofing on my car." Mr. Santos confirmed that account.

The first of five children born to a wealthy cattle rancher, Mr. Uribe grew up on a ranch in rural Antioquia state. His father was a lively man who worked and played hard. Mr. Uribe was more taciturn, taking after his mother, a pioneer in Colombia's suffrage movement and a political junkie.

Antioquia's state capital, Medellin, earned world-wide notoriety as the hub of a cocaine cartel and for its capo, Pablo Escobar. As a child, Mr. Uribe competed in horseback-riding contests with three distant relatives, the Ochoa brothers, who grew up to become drug lords. Mr. Uribe's associations with such figures, however fleeting, have dogged him throughout his career, despite a lack of evidence tying him or his campaigns to traffickers. A 1991 report on Colombian drug traffickers by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of the Pentagon, listed Mr. Uribe as a "close personal friend" of Mr. Escobar. U.S. officials have since discounted the report, as have most experts on the drug trade.

At the University of Antioquia in the late 1970s, he stood out in a politically charged atmosphere dominated by Communists. "I remember the first year of studying law, all our materials were Marxist," he said in an interview in June on the presidential plane. "One day the professor walked in and said he was giving up the classics, and that day he forgot about Socrates, Aristotle, St. Augustine....That kind of thing led many young Colombians to join the guerrillas."

At student assemblies, Mr. Uribe would challenge the leftists' dogma, according to several people who knew him then. The ensuing mockery only seemed to make him more confident of his views, these people say. "Only two weeks after I had met him, I remember thinking, 'That boy is going to be president of Colombia,'" says Carlos Gaviria, then his university professor and currently an opposition politician.

The young lawyer shot up the ranks of the Liberal Party, one of Colombia's two traditional parties, becoming senator at age 32 and governor of Antioquia in 1995. As governor, he earned a reputation as a capable administrator. More controversially, he supported armed neighborhood-watch groups that were later accused of massacring suspected leftist guerrillas. Mr. Uribe has said the groups were disbanded as soon as their illegal actions were uncovered.

His rural roots gave him a fresh perspective on Colombia's troubles. For decades, the country was ruled by an elite clique, mostly from Bogotá, that sometimes seemed indifferent to the violence raging in the countryside and unsure how to solve it. "The guerrillas weren't challenged by society the way they should have been," Mr. Uribe said in the June interview. "And that let them think they could simply take power through violent means."

Mr. Uribe knew firsthand of the suffering caused by such violence. In 1983, the FARC killed his father in a kidnapping attempt at the family ranch. Mr. Uribe himself found the body. Colombian officials say that over the course of Mr. Uribe's political career, he has survived at least 19 assassination attempts.

Following a FARC death threat in 1997, Mr. Uribe won a British Council scholarship to study for a year at St. Anthony's College at Oxford. "He was the only guy at Oxford -- the only guy -- who wore his backpack with both straps across his back," says Jaime Bermudez, who met Mr. Uribe at Oxford and is now Colombia's foreign minister. "He is definitely a nerd."

That same year, conservative Andres Pastrana won the presidency on a platform of making peace with the FARC, and promptly handed over an area the size of Switzerland to the rebels to use as a base to conduct peace talks. The rebels instead used it as a base to carry out kidnappings and attacks. Mr. Uribe, convinced that neither major political party would end the conflict, returned to Colombia and announced a third-party candidacy based on waging war against the rebels. Early polls gave him just 2% of the vote.

But the FARC lost support from ordinary Colombians as it sabotaged electricity pylons, bombed a Bogotá restaurant, killing a 5-year-old girl, and tried to blow up the main reservoir supplying water to the capital. The group kidnapped female presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. With each incident, Mr. Uribe's poll numbers climbed. On May 26, 2002, he won 53% of the vote in a crowded field -- a landslide.

"He recognized early on that Colombia's basic need was security and authority," says Malcolm Deas, Mr. Uribe's professor at Oxford and a staunch supporter.

The new president wasted no time going after the guerrillas. He persuaded Congress to pass an emergency tax hike on businesses to boost military spending. Andres Peñate, then deputy defense minister, recalls that Mr. Uribe called him one day and asked how many people had been kidnapped in Colombia the previous week. Mr. Peñate said he didn't know. Mr. Uribe told him seven. "Do you want to know their names?" the president asked. Mr. Peñate says he made sure he knew the answer from then on.

Critics say Mr. Uribe's fixation on eliminating the FARC has caused him to neglect longstanding problems of inequality, land distribution and poor infrastructure. Colombia's highways, for instance, remain in terrible shape. Many Colombians blamed the president for not keeping a closer eye on financial pyramid schemes that collapsed last month and have left tens of thousands of Colombians in the lurch.

His intervention in the economy has also drawn criticism. He has given tax breaks to encourage certain industries, and has raised various tariffs to offer trade protection. "He is very sure of himself, which is a great thing for battling the guerrillas, but is not so good if you have some unorthodox ideas about the economy," says Mr. Perry, the former World Bank economist.
When the central bank raised interest rates earlier this year in an effort to control inflation, Mr. Uribe blasted the move as unnecessary. Many career bureaucrats in areas such as the Finance Ministry have left because they feel they have no voice, according to former ministry officials.

"He's got the technocrats on the run," says Rudolf Hommes, a finance minister under Mr. Uribe who quit in 2003.

Government officials say Colombia's rapid economic growth rates are evidence that Mr. Uribe's policies work.

This year, Mr. Uribe's biggest confrontation has been with the Supreme Court, which has been investigating the so-called para-politics scandal. In 2002, paramilitary gangs funded the campaigns of many of Mr. Uribe's supporters and used violence to eliminate rivals and intimidate voters, according to court documents and testimony. Many right-wing militias were involved in drug trafficking and were designated "terrorist" organizations by the U.S. for the killing of civilians.

The president's office tried to strip the Supreme Court of its power to investigate crimes by lawmakers. It dropped the initiative under pressure in October.

In September, two representatives of a feared paramilitary leader met with Mr. Uribe's main judicial adviser in the presidential palace. The paramilitary men had promised to bring audiotapes that showed that the Supreme Court was carrying out the investigation as a vendetta against Mr. Uribe. But the tapes weren't incriminating.

Mr. Uribe said his government was obligated to pursue any complaints of wrongdoing by any Colombian institution, and that the paramilitary men had no arrest warrants out against them. Critics disagree. "You cross the line when you start conspiring with criminals to discredit the court," says Adam Isaacson, a Colombia expert at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

In October, the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch issued a report criticizing the Uribe administration for hampering the Supreme Court's investigation into the para-politics scandal. Mr. Uribe responded by calling José Miguel Vivanco, the group's director for the Americas, an "accomplice" and "defender" of the FARC.

After a similar incident last year, Mr. Uribe received a letter from 11 U.S. senators upbraiding him for his record of "inappropriate statements" against human-rights defenders, journalists, judges and others. Among the senators who signed: Mr. Obama.

Ultimately, whether Mr. Uribe runs again may not be up to him. Polls in the past month have shown a marked dip in his popularity. Two weeks ago, Colombia's lower house passed a bill barring Mr. Uribe from a third term. His supporters immediately said they would try to amend it in the Senate to keep his re-election hopes alive.