BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The arrest of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s cousin and political ally, Mario Uribe, on charges of conspiring with the country’s paramilitary groups, brings the country’s so-called “para-politics” scandal closer to the president’s inner circle. Mario Uribe’s arrest on April 22 and the ever-growing domestic scandal that links politicians with outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups is being seen as the most serious crisis facing President Uribe since he first came to power in 2002. A former senator who co-founded the Democratic Colombia Party with the president, Mario Uribe is one of the most prominent politicians engulfed in the scandal [...]
When Colombia bombed a guerrilla camp in Ecuador last month, igniting one of Latin America’s worst diplomatic spats in recent history and nearly sparking a regional war, the leaders at the center of the dispute each emerged with a most unexpected political reward: a boost in their domestic support. Recent opinion polls in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela illustrate that the nationalist stands taken by leaders of the three countries paid off for each of them politically. “All three leaders occupied different roles and all of them are satisfied,” said Juan Gabriel Valdés, former minister of foreign relations in Chile. Colombian [...]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will decide by late 2008 or early 2009 whether France will fully rejoin the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is one of the more important issues left unresolved at the recently concluded Bucharest Summit, where Sarkozy proclaimed: “I reaffirm here France’s determination to pursue the process of renovating its relations with NATO.” Gen. Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s military structure in 1966 in protest over American dominance of the Atlantic Alliance. And more than 40 years later, the issue of American influence over European security remains a fundamental stumbling block to [...]
