POLITICS-LATAM/EU: Summit Roundly Condemns Terrorism

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, May 17 2002 (IPS) - The national leaders gathered at the second Europe, Latin America and Caribbean Summit expressed their broad condemnation of terrorism in the two regions, but an alternative forum announced its opposition to categorising Colombian guerrilla groups as terrorists.

Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, who currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union (EU), said upon inaugurating the summit Friday that “terrorism is the most important and direct threat to our shared value system.”

Terrorism, he added, “is an offence against our basic freedoms, against the rights of people, and seeks to rupture our democracies and endanger international peace and stability.”

Following Aznar, Brazil’s President Fernando Henrique Cardoso addressed the summit, stating that “the fight against terrorism has arisen as one of the fundamental priorities of our time.”

Although he did not mention it explicitly, the Spanish premier’s main political concern is the illegal Basque separatist group ETA, which the EU has included on its list of terrorist organisations. All the heads of state present at the summit, without exception, supported the designation of ETA as terrorist.

The differences in opinion appeared when it came to the Colombian case. The Cuban delegation stated that it did not agree, at least not completely, with applying the terrorist label to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) or the National Liberation Army (ELN), which it considers insurgent organisations.

But Colombia’s President Andrés Pastrana urged the EU to include the FARC and ELN on its list of terrorist organisations, as it has the right-wing paramilitary United Self-Defence Units of Colombia (AUC).

“If the massacre of 119 people (last week in the Colombian town of Bojayá, near the Panama border) is not a terrorist act, if dynamiting a 14-year-old boy and then wrapping him as a gift is not a terrorist act, what is?” Pastrana said in an address before the 21st Century Club in Madrid.

He went on to say, “Those who commit terrorist acts must be categorised as terrorists.”

Aznar agreed with Pastrana and expressed firm support for including the FARC on the EU list of terrorist groups, because, he said, “that is what they are, these groups that carry out intolerable activities.”

France and Sweden are opposed to Pastrana’s request because they believe if the FARC are dubbed terrorists it will be nearly impossible to convene new peace talks with the organisation in the future.

Pastrana responded that negotiations would still be feasible, and pointed out that Spain had conducted talks with ETA, as Britain did with the IRA (Irish Republican Army), groups that the two respective governments consider terrorist.

On another front, in a private discussion, Aznar asked Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, to make a clear commitment to the fight against international terrorism and to effectively control the ETA members living in the South American country.

According to Venezuelan diplomatic sources, Chávez answered in private just as he has in public: the members of ETA in Venezuela are under control and the decision on their requested extradition is in the hands of the Judiciary.

Meanwhile, the Trans-Atlantic Social Forum, a parallel gathering with a critical eye on the Latin American-EU Summit, maintains a different stance than the heads of state when it comes to terrorism.

The participants in the Social Forum even include a delegation from Batasuna, the Basque political party that supports – and is supported by – ETA. The Aznar government and the leading opposition force, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), are manoeuvring to outlaw Batasuna.

Also taking part in the Social Forum are groups that defend the FARC and the ELN, such as the Colombia-based Platform for Peace in the Amazon.

According to a Platform document, in Colombia there is a war between a large insurgency and a “repressive government” that violates human rights, collaborates with paramilitary groups and is maintained and managed by the “Gringo” (U.S.) government, with the complicity of transnational corporations.

The international non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch is urging the EU to continue pressing the Colombian government to crack down on the right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas so that they “respect international human rights laws.”