Ian Kelly
Department Spokesman
Background Briefing by Senior State Department Official
Washington, DC
August 18, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5:25 p.m. EDT)
MR. KELLY: I think our Senior State Department Official has a few remarks to make at the beginning, and then we’ll turn it over to your questions.
QUESTION: Can we make the remarks on the record, and then go on background for questions?
MR. KELLY: I think we’ll just keep it on background. Is that – I mean, you have the Secretary on the record.
Thanks.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Okay. Well, thank you all. I know it’s late, so I’m not going to keep you. At least with my remarks, I’ll make them brief. But I just wanted to give you some context of this agreement because there’s been a lot out there in the press and I want to give you a broader context of knowing what this is about, when we began it. This really started about midway through Plan Colombia that we decided that it was time to formalize a lot of the ad hoc agreements that we’ve developed over the years, really dating back way before Plan Colombia started in 1999 and 2000. Many of these agreements date back to the 1950s and ‘60s and are Cold War relics in some ways. So we felt that there was a lot of value in putting our defense and security and counternarcotics relationship in kind of a broader framework.
So what this agreement is, is really a framework agreement for us to cooperate on counternarcotics and security affairs. It’s not unusual for governments to do this to kind of establish the rules of the game as we move forward. The idea was to formalize this at a time where, as you can see from the numbers for Plan Colombia, that we’re reducing our assistance, in part, because we’re transferring a lot of our security and counternarcotics programs over to the Colombian Government to carry out – and they’re doing a very good job – with the ultimate goal of us having , ideally, a minimal presence in Colombia and returning to the pre-Plan Colombia, pre-1999 kind of relationship that we have in Colombia.
So that’s kind of what the objective was. It’s a strictly bilateral agreement focused on dealing with the drug and the – kind of the terrorist problem, particularly the FARC problem and the ELN problem in Colombia. And you’ll see that the two bases that we’re most interested in having access to are the bases right in the heart of the areas where we have the most problems with the FARC and with narcotics trafficking and cultivation.
In terms of their global – how this ranks with our other agreements, we have these kinds of agreements. All these agreements differ somewhat from country to country because of the local situation or local sensitivities. But we have agreements, such as this one, with about 120 countries in the world. So you can see this is not unusual at all for the United States to have this type of agreement. And we’ll continue to talk to other governments in the region, too, to see if we can develop bilateral accords that meet these two objectives.
So with that, I’ll take your questions. (read full text)
Department Spokesman
Background Briefing by Senior State Department Official
Washington, DC
August 18, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5:25 p.m. EDT)
MR. KELLY: I think our Senior State Department Official has a few remarks to make at the beginning, and then we’ll turn it over to your questions.
QUESTION: Can we make the remarks on the record, and then go on background for questions?
MR. KELLY: I think we’ll just keep it on background. Is that – I mean, you have the Secretary on the record.
Thanks.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Okay. Well, thank you all. I know it’s late, so I’m not going to keep you. At least with my remarks, I’ll make them brief. But I just wanted to give you some context of this agreement because there’s been a lot out there in the press and I want to give you a broader context of knowing what this is about, when we began it. This really started about midway through Plan Colombia that we decided that it was time to formalize a lot of the ad hoc agreements that we’ve developed over the years, really dating back way before Plan Colombia started in 1999 and 2000. Many of these agreements date back to the 1950s and ‘60s and are Cold War relics in some ways. So we felt that there was a lot of value in putting our defense and security and counternarcotics relationship in kind of a broader framework.
So what this agreement is, is really a framework agreement for us to cooperate on counternarcotics and security affairs. It’s not unusual for governments to do this to kind of establish the rules of the game as we move forward. The idea was to formalize this at a time where, as you can see from the numbers for Plan Colombia, that we’re reducing our assistance, in part, because we’re transferring a lot of our security and counternarcotics programs over to the Colombian Government to carry out – and they’re doing a very good job – with the ultimate goal of us having , ideally, a minimal presence in Colombia and returning to the pre-Plan Colombia, pre-1999 kind of relationship that we have in Colombia.
So that’s kind of what the objective was. It’s a strictly bilateral agreement focused on dealing with the drug and the – kind of the terrorist problem, particularly the FARC problem and the ELN problem in Colombia. And you’ll see that the two bases that we’re most interested in having access to are the bases right in the heart of the areas where we have the most problems with the FARC and with narcotics trafficking and cultivation.
In terms of their global – how this ranks with our other agreements, we have these kinds of agreements. All these agreements differ somewhat from country to country because of the local situation or local sensitivities. But we have agreements, such as this one, with about 120 countries in the world. So you can see this is not unusual at all for the United States to have this type of agreement. And we’ll continue to talk to other governments in the region, too, to see if we can develop bilateral accords that meet these two objectives.
So with that, I’ll take your questions. (read full text)
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