Bush Met by Colombia Red Carpet, Riots

BOGOTA, Colombia - President Bush pledged continued support Sunday to this
strong but drug and violence-plagued U.S. ally, on a visit marked by both
warm official welcomes and rioting protesters.

"Your country has come through very difficult times and now there's a
brighter day ahead," Bush said to President Alvaro Uribe after their
meetings and lunch at the presidential palace. "We have been friends and we
will remain friends."

Bush came to Colombia's capital for a show of confidence in Uribe and the
country's battle against narcoterrorists. But the stop was clouded by a
political scandal involving Uribe, and security jitters had Bush staying
only about six hours.

Colombia was the third country on the president's five-nation tour of Latin
America. He began his journey in Brazil, flew here from Uruguay and was
headed later Sunday to Guatemala. Bush last stops in Mexico before
returning to Washington Wednesday.

Despite close ties between Uribe and Bush, the U.S. president's visit has
generated considerable criticism and strong protests.

About a mile away from the presidential palace that was the site for all
Bush's events, some 2,000 protesters chanted "Down with Bush" and burned
American flags.

About 150 of them broke away, attacking riot police with rocks and metal
barriers and ripping down lampposts. Some 200 helmeted police in full body
armor responded with water cannons and tear gas to reclaim the street. The
president's convoy passed about 200 yards away. There were reports of one
police officer was injured and three dozen arrests.

Friday night, a concert by former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters featured
a big balloon of a pig that said "Patron Bush, Welcome to your Colombian
Ranch."

It was Bogota's first visit from a sitting president since Ronald Reagan in
1982. Bush went in 2004 to coastal Cartagena, always deemed far safer than
the capital of this country afflicted by civil conflict for half a century.

Bush received a red-carpet greeting by a military honor guard when his
plane landed. Upon arrival in the palace courtyard, horses pranced and a
large military band played the national anthems of both countries before
the two presidents reviewed troops.

Some 20,000 police and heavily armed troops were mobilized to prevent any
rebel attack.

Sharpshooters were positioned on rooftops, the city center was shut down to
traffic and Bogotanos had to do without their beloved "ciclovia," in which
major avenues are given over on Sundays to biking, skating and jogging.

Bush rode to the palace on a route lined with gun-toting police standing
guard every few feet, and his motorcade included white pickup trucks with
local security officers filling the beds. Manhole covers were spray-painted
to alert security agents to tampering.

"The security measures are excessive," said 56-year-old Manuel Cifuentes,
who runs a food stand on the Plaza de Bolivar and said he hasn't had much
business in the last few days.

The president has indicated he will ask Congress to maintain current aid
levels to Colombia at roughly $700 million annually to support the Latin
American nation's fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. Colombia
receives more U.S. aid than any country outside the Middle East and
Afghanistan.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe noted Bush would meet with Colombians
involved in various U.S programs "that help them reap the benefits of a
democracy as well as demonstrate the compassion of the American people."

Ahead of Bush's visit, the Colombian law-and-order president urged for
continued aid, crediting the U.S. assistance with helping to make his
violence-tortured nation more peaceful and less corrupt. The U.S. has sent
nearly $4 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia since Uribe took
office in 2002.

"We haven't yet won but we are winning. And we will persist," Uribe said in
an interview last week with The Associated Press.

But Democrats who now control the U.S. Congress have been asking tough
questions about that aid.

Eight close Uribe allies in Colombia's Congress, as well as his hand-picked
former domestic intelligence chief, have been jailed for allegedly
colluding with right-wing militias in a reign of terror that nearly
subverted Colombian democracy.

The scandal prompted Uribe's foreign minister to resign last month when her
senator brother and father, a regional power broker, were implicated for
alleged participation in the kidnapping of a political rival.

Many Democrats in the U.S. are expressing concern about Colombia's human
rights record. They also want greater emphasis on social programs - more
than 3 million have been displaced by the decades of fighting - and on
bolstering an overtaxed justice system.

Colombia remains the source of more than 90 percent of the world's cocaine
despite record aerial fumigation of coca crops. And the leftist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has neither been defeated
nor had any members of its leadership captured.

The paramilitaries, which gained control of the entire Caribbean coast
during the past decade, demobilized two years ago under a peace pact with
Uribe's government. The paramilitaries arose in response to kidnappings and
extortion by leftist rebels.

Bush and Uribe also were expected to discuss a U.S.-Colombia free-trade
agreement now before Congress. Colombian demonstrators called for the
scuttling of the pact, signed in November and currently stalled in Congress.

Meanwhile, three Americans have been held by rebels for more than four
years in Colombia without the Bush administration taking routine steps
toward freeing them, current and former U.S. officials say. Family members
have cautioned the U.S. on a rescue attempt that could bring the hostages'
deaths.

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