U.S. aid would help press, too

By: Mark Fitzgerald COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT TELLS IAPA THAT A BIG BOOST IN AMERICAN FOREIGN AID WOULD BETTER HIS COUNTRY'S CRIMINAL-JUSTICE SYSTEM

To the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), Colombian President Andr?s Pastrana Arango is the good news/bad news duality personified: He's the leader of the world's most dangerous country for journalists ? and he's a former TV anchor who suffered anti-press violence first-hand.
Pastrana introduced himself at IAPA's 55th annual general assembly in Houston as "a colleague and a Colombian who respects and defends democratic liberties, especially freedom of the press." Colombians, he said, are as outraged as the press association itself at the wave of kidnapping, intimidation, assaults, and murder that has left 80 journalists dead so far this decade, and that seems to be accelerating. In the past six weeks, three journalists, including the very popular radio satirist Jaime Garz?n, have been gunned down.
"In no other part of the world have journalists had to suffer so severely the effects of corruption, intolerance, internal conflict, and violence. I myself suffered in my own body this violence, when in 1988 the drug cartels kidnapped me for a number of days," Pastrana said.
He suggested that Colombia is doing a better job of finding and prosecuting the killers of journalists. He noted that two suspects have already been charged with murdering Guzm?n Quintero Torres three weeks ago as the editor in chief of the provincial paper El Pilon celebrated the birthday of a reporter.
Pastrana urged the organization to support his "Colombia Plan" of receiving dramatically increased foreign aid from the United States and Europe to strengthen the nation's police, military, and justice systems.
Pastrana also used his appearance at IAPA to criticize the press. He said Colombian and international journalists had exaggerated the controversial territorial concessions he made to get peace talks going with the guerrilla group known as FARC. He suggested the press was irresponsible in painting an overly bleak picture of Colombia.
Journalists, Pastrana told the IAPA, "must always remember in their souls that there is no greater social crime than robbing the hope of a people."
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