Military

DATE=8/7/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=ISAAC COHEN

NUMBER=3-285

BYLINE=REBECCA WARD

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

HOST: At least 15 people were killed in explosions in Bogota during the inauguration of the new president, Alvaro Uribe.

Isaac Cohen is the retired director of the Washington office of the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the Carribean. He told VOA News Now's Rebecca Ward that Colombia should be prepared for more violence as the new president makes good on his promise to crack down on leftist rebels and illegal right-wing paramilitary groups.

MR. COHEN: The new president of Colombia is inaugurated at a time where there is an imminent possibility of an aggravation of that conflict. And obviously I think that we are going to see much more of that fact precisely because the war is going to be intensified, as has been promised by the new president. And the United States has approved the assistance that has been given to the country to combat drug trafficking should now be channeled to the war. So we are going to see an intensification of that conflict in the very short term.

MS. WARD: Do you think that he can clamp down on the rebels?

MR. COHEN: We are talking about the oldest low-intensity warfare in Latin America, and I think that it is going to become much more of an intense kind of conflict. The conflict is already spilling over Colombia's borders into neighboring countries. The United States is now going to assist the government in fighting the guerrillas, and I guess we are bound for an intensification of the conflict.

Yes, President Uribe has said that one of the first things he is going to do is to increase the amount of military personnel in the country. That means that that is the program.

MS. WARD: You said that the conflict there has been one of the longest running in Latin America. Why has it gone on so long?

MR. COHEN: The longest. I would say it is the longest low-intensity warfare in the region. Well, it started in one way and then it became linked to other issues and conflicts. Now it is different. It is not the kind of conflict that started. It has been changing. It is very dynamic and it has been adapting to different circumstances.

The bottom line is that it is a country that has lived under violence for the last 50 years. And that is exasperating people. This is why I think Colombians have voted for this president, because the president has promised that he is going to deal with this in a different manner.

MS. WARD: Why do you think former President Pastrana had little success in dealing with the rebels?

MR. COHEN: He tried to negotiate. He tried to find a negotiated solution. And I guess in other countries of Latin America we have seen negotiated solutions that have worked, like in El Salvador, in Guatemala. So I think he gave it a shot at trying to solve this in a peaceful manner through negotiations. The conflict is going to end in negotiations, one way or the other, because it is an internal war that needs to be negotiated at some point. The solution needs to be negotiated. But I think we are not there right now. As Pastrana's failure at the negotiating table demonstrated, I don't think negotiations are ready to generate solutions there

HOST: Isaac Cohen is the retired director of the Washington office of the U-N's Economic Commission for Latin America. He spoke to VOA News Now's Rebecca Ward.

(End of interview)