Days earlier the commanders of the Colombian and Peruvian air forces had signed an agreement on `operational procedures [...] to strengthen the control of the airspace in the border zone.' The declared purpose was to `foster mutual confidence measures contributing to protect the citizens and security of both countries in the framework of the principles of international law.' Colombia an Peru have a 1,626-kilometre common border.
In early September, Peruvian prime minister Beatriz Merino travelled to Washington to lobby for the prompt resumption of interdiction flights from Peru. Typically, the US provides funding for the equipment and is in charge of targeting the suspect aircraft.
COLOMBIA | Drug-traffickers' farming link exposed. The sanitised version of the origins of Colombia's paramilitary organisations, as having been created for self-defence by farmers and cattle-ranchers, has been punctured by a study just released by the comptroller-general's office in Bogotá. It finds that 48% of Colombia's most productive agricultural land — some 4m hectares valued at about US$2.4bn — are owned by drug traffickers, who bought it initially as an ideal vehicle for laundering the profits of their trade. This is a detail well worth keeping in mind in connection with the process now under way to demobilise the paramilitary groups. Their leaders have been seeking assurances that their assets will not be touched.
ECUADOR | Gunrunning under the spotlight. The discovery by police of a clandestine arms cache including army-issue weapons has turned the spotlight on two issues hitherto not much publicised in Ecuador: the extent of arms smuggling through Ecuadorean territory to Colombia, and the role played in this by the theft of weaponry from military arsenals.
The cache recently discovered included 4,000 blocks of pentolite, dozens of boxes of 7.62mm ammunition, machineguns, pistols and detonators. A shipment seized after being hurriedly landed from a sinking ship yielded 2,500 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition. A retired army colonel came forward with the charge that his superiors had aborted an investigation into the theft of 40,000 rounds of ammunition from an arsenal in 1999, and claims have resurfaced that an explosion last year in another army arsenal was meant to disguise a major theft of weaponry and munitions. The Colombian military and police have reported the capture of considerable amounts of Ecuadorean military-issue weapons and ammunition from Farc guerrillas.
PERU | Internal war toll skyrockets. The long-awaited `truth commission' report on Peru's internal conflict between 1980 and 2000, unveiled in late August, includes a highly controversial projection which puts the death toll above 69,000, as against the previous official estimate of 25-30,000. The methodology, used previously in Guatemala and Kosovo, is being hotly challenged, and not only by politicians with axes to grind. Experts have queried the applicability of a straight projection to Peru, where checks against contemporary data (absent in the cases of Guatemala and Kosovo) are possible. It is also objected that a projection is of no use for the purposes of determining compensation or penal responsibility.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 560 words.
Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article
Not a Subscriber?
Choose from one of the following options
