Excerpt from White House press briefing, February 28, 2002

Excerpt from White House press briefing, February 28, 2002

Office of the Press Secretary
February 28, 2002

Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer
The James S. Brady Briefing Room

1:06 P.M. EST

...

Q Well, in the case of Colombia, Colombia is getting aid already from the United States, but the aid is strictly limited by Congress for certain objectives only. And I understand Colombia has asked the U.S. government to see if they can use some of those funds to help fight the guerrillas, FARC, now that negotiations have broken down and there have been Colombian troops into the zone of dissension. And my question is -- I think the President answered he has to abide by the laws. My question is, is the President willing to try to convince Congress to allow some of those funds to be used the way the Colombian government wants to use it?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President is aware that there are different members of Congress who have different ideas about the statute that is in place. The President will, of course, continue to, one, support the Pastrana government, and do so strongly; two, abide by the statute that is in place.

The administration is prepared to listen to the ideas from members of Congress. But I remind you, this is also one of the reasons, because of the FARC and the threat that it poses to the people of Colombia and the government of Colombia, that the President's budget requests in 2003, $98 million of additional money to help train the Colombian military to defend critical infrastructure, with an additional focus on the oil pipelines in that country from the terrorist attacks that have taken place.

So we are already engaged with Congress in an attempt to do more to help the Pastrana government. And you are correct, the United States has provided a very robust package of aid for Colombia. I think it was $1.3 billion of support for Colombia in their anti-narcotics efforts, as well as additional money through what's called the Andean Regional Initiative.

...

MR. FLEISCHER: ... In Colombia, the FARC is a listed terrorist organization. It traffics in narcotics, it attacks pipelines, it hijacks airplanes, it kidnaps presidential candidates and state senators. I think there's no question that the American people want to help the government of Colombia put an end to that type of violence.

As of March 11, 2002, this document was also available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/20020228-6.html