Latam urges UN push, but no troops, on Colombia

Reuters, 05.24.03, 5:03 PM ET By Missy Ryan

CUSCO, Peru, May 24 (Reuters) - Latin American leaders urged the United Nations on Saturday to do more to stop rebel violence in Colombia, but stopped short of endorsing outside military action in the Andean nation's bloody four-decade war.

"We presidents of the Rio Group have agreed to ask the U.N. Secretary General (Kofi Annan) to call on the (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) FARC to halt violence and ... walk toward peace," Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo told reporters.

But Toledo cautioned that the joint declaration, signed at the end of an annual summit of 19 members in the mountain city of Cusco, did not mean that Latin America had decided it would commit to helping Colombia militarily.

"Peace is our concern. ... We should be facilitators and there was no decision about external forces participating in Colombia. The issue did not even come up," he said.

But that had appeared to be a possibility for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who said a day earlier that if the FARC did not follow the U.N. urging, "we would have to seek another remedy, which should entail all nations helping Colombia defeat terrorism militarily."

Still, it was not entirely clear whether the action the Rio Group wants the United Nations to take would mean a resolution urging a cease-fire and peace talks, or something else.

Thousands of people are killed every year in Colombia as the FARC and other armed groups battle security forces and each other. The Uribe government has promised a hard military line against rebels and the drug trafficking that it says finances rebel arms purchases.

The United Nations already has a small role in Colombia. Shortly after Uribe took office in August, he invited a U.N. special envoy to facilitate peace talks. There has been little progress in the negotiations.

SUPPORT NOT UNANIMOUS

Because of the many U.S. interventions in Latin America over the past 150 years, many Latin American countries bristle at any talk of intervention from the United States or elsewhere.

The United States has a presence in Colombia. It has poured about $2 billion into the anti-drug war in Colombia, the world's top cocaine producer, in the last two years.

One of those opposing a larger U.N. role in Colombia was Venezuela's left-leaning Presidents Hugo Chavez, who warned it could set a perilous precedent.

"What this (declaration) establishes is very dangerous. ... It opens the door to something much more serious than a war: (foreign) intervention," said Chavez, who, nevertheless, signed the declaration "with reservations."

"Never on this continent has this been proposed. For example in Peru, which had a rebel problem, no one proposed that ... a multinational force come in to occupy," he added.

The summit concluded with a resolution focusing on political party reform and new financial mechanisms to secure investment, give more access to credit and fight poverty. Leaders signed the resolution, which will be translated into the Andean language of Quechua, at an Inca fortress as locals bearing golden shields stood guard.

Latin America may be emerging from economic woes that led the regional economy to a 0.6 percent contraction in 2002, but the United Nations says even projected growth of near 2 percent in 2003 will not slash troubling poverty rates.

Toledo said that Rio Group nations would look to Brazil and Mexico -- the region's biggest economies -- to speak for Latin America at a June Group of Eight nations meeting.

"The industrialized world needs to know we believe in democracy and governance ... and that globalization means we all play by the same rules," Toledo said.