17 August 2000Sec. Albright/Argentine Foreign Minister News Conference
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesman (Buenos Aires, Argentina) Press Availability with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright And Argentine Foreign Minister Rodriguez Giavarini Palacio San Martin Buenos Aires, Argentina August 16, 2000 Q: A question for Madame Secretary: Can you tell us how you responded this morning to the request that the U.S. declassify more documents referring to the repression in Argentina in former decades. And could I also ask the Foreign Minister, what he thinks about the Plan Colombia and the massive U.S. investment in that plan? SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: I had an excellent meeting this morning with the NGO community, which not only was composed of some of the Mothers and Grandmothers from the disappeared, but also representatives of women's groups, legal organizations, environmental, support for civil society, and I have particularly enjoyed meetings whenever I travel, with representatives of civil society, and if I could make this judgment, I found this one of the most vibrant, and interesting of these kinds of groupings, and really a sign of the very important role that civil society is playing in Argentina and the importance of that relationship with the government. As far as your specific question is concerned, I said that I would do my best to try to see what papers there were, and when I got back that I would do that, and see. As you know the State Department is not responsible, or is not the keeper of all papers. But I will do what I can to be of assistance because this is an issue of humanitarian as well as conscience that I think we need to deal with. ... Q: My question is the following: the Republican presidential candidate George Bush Jr. has expressed fears about the possibility that Colombia might turn into a new Vietnam for the United States because he said there is a fine line between training and combat. I would like to know if you express or you share these same feelings. Thank you very much. SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: I am not going to comment on any candidate's position because, as I've made it very clear, I had all my partisan instincts surgically removed when I became Secretary of State. However, I will say that we have been very careful about Colombia. A couple of years ago I felt that it was important for us to focus on certain countries in order to do everything we could to help them pursue a democratic path, deal with their economic and social problems, deal, if necessary, with whatever peace processes they have in place, and deal with their internal problems. The countries that I chose, not only for their inherent importance, but also for their importance to the region, are Indonesia, Nigeria, Ukraine and Colombia, all of them very complicated and all of them very important to the national interests of the United States as well as to their regions. In Colombia, President Pastrana constructed Plan Colombia which is a comprehensive way of not only dealing with the very serious narco-trafficking problems but with social economic issues, with the human rights questions, and with the peace process. And the United States is supportive of that. Whatever military component there is to it, is one which has to do with providing a security envelope by the Colombian military for the national police in dealing with narco-trafficking. And we are very much aware of fine lines having been deeded some fine lines by the previous administration. So I think that we are very careful about this and are very concerned to make sure that the military involved in this have clean human right records. Each of the individuals has been vetted for their human rights records. But what is, I think very important that should not be missed as a part of Plan Colombia is its comprehensiveness and its social and economic aspects, and its human rights aspects, and those countries that are supporting it financially, for instance the Europeans are helping in terms of the social and economic parts of this. So I think it is very important to see it as a complete plan constructed by the Colombians, for Colombians. (end transcript)