U.S. Accused by Colombia of Blockade

Colombian officials Sunday accused the Bush Administration of initiating a naval and air blockade of Colombia and refused to take part in American drug-interdiction patrols off the Colombian coast.

Angered by Washington’s unilateral decision to dispatch a flotilla of warships for anti-drug patrols off the Colombian coast, the officials complained that they had not been consulted.

“The government has not participated nor will it participate in any maneuver in international waters of the Caribbean Sea with U.S. naval or air forces,” a Colombian government statement published in the national newspaper El Tiempo said.

The statement added that the Colombian government has not authorized U.S. forces to operate in Colombian territorial waters “nor has (it) considered authorizing them.”

Although the printed statement did not call the U.S. action a blockade, Colombian press reports quoted government officials who referred to the action in those terms.

Meanwhile, an editorial in a leading Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, charged that the U.S. military action is evidence of a new “imperial policy” in Latin America.

“Colombia can in no way accept an armed intervention or blockade of its territorial waters under the questionable proposition of patrolling international waters,” the editorial declared.

Peruvian officials, meantime, renewed a threat to boycott next month’s anti-drug summit in Cartagena, Colombia, unless all the U.S. troops sent to Panama last month to conduct the Dec. 20 invasion are withdrawn.

The actions by the two Latin nations underscored strains between the United States and its neighbors in Latin America. Publicly and privately, many Latin leaders have complained that the Panama operation signaled an unwelcome new wave of U.S. colonialism and interventionism.

The aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy and the guided-missile cruiser Virginia left their home port of Norfolk, Va., last Thursday for what was officially described as “routine training” in the Caribbean. But U.S. officials confirmed Saturday that the ships will take up station off Colombia shortly to monitor and intercept airborne and seaborne drug traffic.

The anti-drug program also involves the use of airborne and ground-based Air Force radar to blanket Colombian airspace in an effort to track suspected drug smugglers, sources said.

The White House announced late last week that the Administration had “decided to take certain options to help the countries of Latin America interdict these supply routes. We are anxious to help Colombia.” On Sunday, however, President Bush said he has made no decision about the use of the Navy and Air Force to monitor Colombia.

“I will address myself . . . to that question at a future date,” the President said while on a jogging excursion in the capital.

National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, in a television interview Sunday, rejected the Colombian characterization of the U.S. action as a “blockade.”

“Now that’s a warlike, negative term. What we would be doing, if we did anything down there, would be a cooperative effort in conjunction with the countries there to help get better control of the drug traffickers,” he said.

In a related development, a Peruvian government spokesman said Sunday that President Alan Garcia will attend an anti-drug summit next month if Bush withdraws all 14,000 U.S. combat troops flown into Panama to help carry out the invasion. An additional 13,000 American troops are permanently stationed in Panama to defend the Panama Canal under terms of U.S.-Panamanian treaties signed in 1977 and ratified the following year.

Garcia, whose administration has been shaken by calamitous economic woes and a deadly guerrilla war, had previously said that he could not meet Bush at the Feb. 15 summit in the Colombian port of Cartagena because he felt Bush represented an “invading state that is crushing Latin America.”

Garcia softened that stand somewhat on Sunday, saying: “If by the date the meeting starts, our Latin American will has been satisfied (by a U.S. withdrawal from Panama), we will attend the meeting.”

Together, Peru and its neighbor, Bolivia, are the world’s principal growers of coca, the raw material for cocaine. Both nations harbor clandestine cocaine laboratories, but most of the world’s illicit cocaine comes from Colombia’s illegal laboratories, using raw material smuggled from Peru and Bolivia. The presidents of all three Latin nations, at their initiative, were originally scheduled to meet with Bush in Cartagena next month.

Senior Administration officials, appearing on Sunday television talk shows, conceded that there are problems with Latin leaders, but insisted that the United States has “nothing to apologize for” in regards to actions in Panama.

“I don’t think there is any question at all that we do, in fact, have a problem, and the vice president is going down to talk to these leaders, to talk to these countries, to explain what we did” in Panama, Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“At the same time, I think it ought to be very, very clear that the United States has nothing to apologize for, since we brought democracy to a country that had been without it for the better part of two decades,” Eagleburger said.

At the same time, Eagleburger would not rule out military intervention in Nicaragua should the ruling Sandinista party “steal” next month’s election. But he said such military action was “highly unlikely.”

Echoing a statement made by Bush on Friday, Scowcroft said the U.S. invasion of Panama was based on “unique” circumstances and did not signal a new round of American gunboat diplomacy in the region.

“I would not say that this is a precedent for any other action. Panama in a number of ways is unique. . . . I would not draw conclusions from it,” Scowcroft said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

Meanwhile, controversy is growing over the number of civilian casualties in the Panama operation. Former Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, a private lawyer speaking on behalf of U.S.-based human rights groups, charged during a weekend visit to Panama that thousands of innocent Panamanians were killed by U.S. forces.

Clark accused the U.S. government of engaging in a “conspiracy of silence” to hide the human toll of the conflict and said that he had heard estimates of 4,000 dead and some as high as 7,000 dead. He cited only unnamed “human rights groups” when he was asked at a Saturday news conference in Panama City for his sources of those figures.

Oswaldo Velasquez, director of the Panama Civil Rights Committee, told the Washington Post that his office has received no complaints against U.S. soldiers and that the number of worried relatives hunting for missing loved ones in Panama was “not in contradiction” to official death tolls.

While the United States has issued no official count of civilian casualties, Eagleburger on Sunday estimated that 400 Panamanian soldiers and civilians died in the attack. However, he cautioned, “Don’t hold me to this figure.”

Scowcroft, asked the number of civilian casualties, said, “I honestly don’t know, but I’m pretty certain neither does Ramsey Clark.”

Times staff writer Kenneth Freed, in Panama City, contributed to this story.