Sec. 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)