Weekly Report - 30 March 2004

The US State Department has confirmed that President George Bush is seeking substantial increases in the ceilings placed on the posting of US military and mercenary personnel in Colombia. The announcement came just as Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was visiting Washington to lobby for a four-year extension of Plan Colombia, the counternarcotics and counterinsurgency scheme launched by his predecessor Andrés Pastrana, which has already received about US$2.6bn from the US.