[NOTE: Human rights? We don't need no human rights! -DG]

``More arms and bullets will not feed the children I see on the streets'' 

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, 23 September 1999

President opts out of meeting with high-level human rights delegation 

By Margarite Martinez

BOGOTA -- President Andres Pastrana on Thursday declined to meet with a high-level human rights delegation that had openly criticized his quest for more U.S. military aid to fight the drug war.

A presidential spokesman said Pastrana, who returned from Washington on Wednesday, was unable to meet with the delegation led by a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon.

He said Pastrana's agenda was tight, and the group arrived 30 minutes late to its morning appointment at the presidential palace.

Kerry Kennedy Cuomo heads a human rights foundation named after her late father. Garzon is the magistrate seeking Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's extradition from Great Britain on genocide and other charges.

At a news conference Thursday concluding a four-day visit, the human rights delegation -- which also included former U.S. federal judge Marvin Frankel and Guatemalan Attorney Frank Larue -- repeated criticism that provoked rebukes this week from Colombian officials.

They said Pastrana's government was not doing enough to protect threatened human rights workers, and was taking a dangerous step in inviting massive U.S. aid to help Colombia's military fight against illegal narcotics.

Kennedy Cuomo said any increased U.S. aid would be more usefully directed towards fighting poverty and helping Colombia pay its foreign debts.

``More arms and bullets will not feed the children I see on the streets,'' she told The Associated Press in an interview.

During his visit to the United States this week, Pastrana lobbied President Clinton and lawmakers for hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid as part of a $3.5 billion appeal for help in fighting narcotics and forging peace.

Most of the nearly $300 million in U.S. anti-narcotics aid this year is going to Colombia's anti-narcotics police, widely seen as more professional than the military.