U.S. troops to use Colombian bases

The presidents of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) called a summit to debate the U.S.-Colombian agreement to give U.S. troops access to Colombian military bases for the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.

If nothing else, it was good TV, said José Vales in Mexico’s El Universal. The presidents of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) spoke passion­ately—sometimes sharply—with one another last week at a summit in Argentina that was televised live across most of the continent. The “tense” meeting was called to debate Colombia’s recent agreement to allow U.S. troops to use seven Colombian military bases for the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led the opposition to the U.S.-Colombian pact, was in top form, waving a document that he said was a Pentagon plan to dominate Latin America through the bases. “These seven Yankee bases are a declaration of war,” Chávez charged. The presidents of Ecuador and Bolivia agreed, saying that President Obama owed it to South America to explain just what the U.S. is doing in the region. Ultimately, though, the summit did not produce the expected condemnation of the base plan. Instead, the South American leaders simply signed a document reiterating that their continent was a “zone of peace.”

That outcome, said Roberto López Moreno in Ecuador’s La Hora, was actually a big victory for Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who somehow talked his way out of what was expected to be universal disapproval. And it was Ecuador’s own President Rafael Correa who “unwittingly gave Uribe an opening” in his speech. Correa said it was Colombia’s responsibility, not the U.S.’s, to crack down on the FARC,

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