Excerpt from State Department Daily Briefing, February 25, 2003

Excerpt from State Department Daily Briefing, February 25, 2003
Daily Press Briefing
Philip T. Reeker, Deputy Spokesman
Washington, DC
February 25, 2003

QUESTION: On Colombia, we have, so there's need to have it again, the U.S. response to the statement that Americans are prisoners of war. But since the U.S. said no negotiations and you're responsible for their safety, et cetera, has there been any response from the FARC rebels?

MR. REEKER: I am not aware of any new developments in that regard, Barry. We continue to demand that the FARC rebels release the Americans immediately and unharmed. The FARC is responsible for the American crewmembers' safety, health and well-being, these being crewmembers of an aircraft that went down last week in Colombia.

The Government of Colombia, as you know, assisted by the United States, is continuing to use all available resources to conduct search-and-rescue operations and that's what we will continue to do.

QUESTION: Well, on the same subject -- I'm still a little confused about the taken question, the answer to the taken question that you -- was put out yesterday. It seems to suggest that, in fact, the 150 troops sent to Colombia recently were, in fact, for a search-and-rescue operation.

MR. REEKER: No. I think, again, if you go back to what I said yesterday, the 150 number was erroneous and mistaken. There were not 150 troops. That was an erroneous press report. The number was far lower than that. They were not special operations troops, which was also confused or an erroneous report. You would have to talk to the Pentagon for the specifics on that.

I think to clarify once again, as we tried to in what we posted, we have no intention of exceeding the cap of 400 on those trainers that are involved in supporting Plan Colombia. The number of U.S. military personnel in country who are engaged in the Plan Colombia support does not exceed the cap of 400 that was established under the legislation. What we did brief Congress about last week informally, was that a limited number of military personnel were going to go to Colombia to support the search-and-rescue operations, what we just discussed here, where we're supporting the Colombians in the search-and-rescue operations for these American crewmembers, exactly.

QUESTION: That's quite different from what you said yesterday at the briefing.

MR. REEKER: It's not at all.

QUESTION: Well, okay.

MR. REEKER: We can go get the transcript out, Jonathan, and look back at it.

QUESTION: You said that they were going there on a pre-planned training --

MR. REEKER: No, no. That was the increase in trainers. See, there was confusion. The reason there was confusion, and you've got these differences of reports was that there were, under the legislation, and under the additional trainers going down to support Plan Colombia projects -- under that legislation for counterterrorism training, for infrastructure defense purposes and the training involved with that, there were, an additional number of trainers going down.

That deployment, which was pre-planned, occurred at about the same time that then some additional personnel, quite separate, also had to travel to Colombia, that is, the search-and-rescue personnel. So the cap of 400 trainers is not being exceeded. There is no plan to exceed that cap. That's what we continually keep Congress apprised of.

We also informally told Congress about the search-and-rescue personnel that would be going down, and as we discussed yesterday in the taken question that we posted indicated, no formal notification or waiver is required because the legislation makes quite clear that emergency personnel like the search-and-rescue personnel don't fall under that category.

Is that clear now?

QUESTION: Yes.

As of February 26, 2003, this document was also available online at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2003/17961.htm