Moscow attacks U.S. aid to Colombia

By Toby Westerman

Editor’s note: WND’s multi-lingual reporter Toby Westerman
specializes in monitoring global shortwave broadcasts and reading
foreign-language news journals for information not readily available
from the domestic press. Each month, Westerman presents a special
in-depth report in WorldNetDaily’s monthly magazine, WorldNet. Readers
may

subscribe to WorldNet
through WND’s online store.

By I.J. Toby Westerman
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com


Moscow has condemned the recently announced U.S. aid package — predominately military in nature — to the South American nation of Colombia.

The $1.3 billion in U.S. assistance is “a fresh model of interference in another country’s affairs” and further evidence of “the dangerous aspirations of the Western military,” according to official Russian sources.

Moscow suspects that the military aid offered to Colombia “will fight not only against drug dealers but [also] against rebels …” in order “to test, in practical terms, direct global policy in the conditions of yet another country.”

The statements were carried by the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government.

The aid package is part of Plan Colombia, an initiative of Colombian President Andres Pastrana, to eliminate the manufacturing and sale of drugs, which have financed that nation’s 40-year civil war.

According to Moscow, the United States is interested only in the military aspects of Plan Colombia. “It was unpleasant to Washington that the Colombia Plan also sought support for social reforms and strengthened the democratic institutions” of Colombia, the broadcast declared.

While admitting “the Colombian authorities have themselves called for international assistance,” Moscow nevertheless denounced “the purchase of 60 helicopters and the training of Colombian ‘task units.'”

At present, Colombian Marxist guerrilla groups and drug lords hold approximately 40 percent of the nation in their grip. The rebels obtain money from the profits of the drug cartel in order to finance their operations.

Echoing the threat of the Colombian guerrillas, Moscow warned “this new escalation” would make “the domestic Colombian conflict international.”

Moscow also tied U.S. aid to Colombia to the events in the Balkans by stating, “The recent aggression of the United States and NATO against Yugoslavia, among other events, has alerted Russia to the dangerous aspirations of the Western military.”

“This explains,” according to Moscow, “why only the most naïve can remain unperturbed” by President Bill Clinton’s statement asserting that the new aid package would not lead to another Vietnam-type conflict, nor is it an act of “imperialism.”

Moscow’s distress over U.S. aid to Colombia comes at a time when Russia itself is involved in direct military aid to former Soviet republics struggling against Islamic fundamentalist guerrilla groups infiltrating from neighboring Afghanistan.

The day before Moscow expressed its displeasure at U.S. military assistance to Colombia, the Russian government announced that the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan requested — and would receive — military assistance from Russia “to eliminate units of Islamic fundamentalists which invaded the republic.”

Moscow considers the request from Uzbekistan as “an alarm signal which is evidence of growing tension in Central Asia.”

Observers have noted that Central Asia is not only affected by an incursion of Islamic militants, but that the guerrillas are also finding recruits among young Muslims in the area to increase their numbers.

Ironically, while Moscow considers U.S. aid to Colombia as testing a “model of interference in another country’s affairs,” Russia’s military aid to Uzbekistan is reported as done merely “according to bilateral agreement.”


Related story:


Colombian rebels threaten Vietnam-type conflict

Toby Westerman

I.J. Toby Westerman, is a contributing reporter for WorldNetDaily and editor/publisher of International News Analysis Today. Read more of Toby Westerman's articles here.