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Emailed to Rep. Price on behalf of CANVRT onMay 23, 2002
May 23, 2002
Dear Representative Price,
I am writing on behalf of the Committee for an Active, Non-Violent Response to Terrorism (CANVRT) of the Chapel Hill Friends' Meeting. We are opposed to the growing U.S. involvement in the Colombian Civil War and ask that you work to halt this involvment.
The FY2002 Supplemental Spending request would allow Colombia to use more than $1 billion in counter-narcotics resources, including 3 U.S.-trained battalions and a fleet of attack helicopters, to fight a "unified campaign against narcotics trafficking, activities by designated terrorist organizations, and activities threatening human health and welfare." The bill would also make a $6 million down- payment in training and equipment for members of the Colombian military to guard an oil pipeline carrying oil belonging to California-based Occidental Petroleum. These two provisions would draw the U.S. more deeply into the quagmire of Colombia's 38-year-old bloody civil war.
Amendments will be offered on the House floor to block these proposed policy changes. Reps. Skelton (MO) and McGovern (MA) will offer an amendment to block the Colombian government from using current U.S. counter-narcotics aid for fighting Colombia's 38-year-old civil war. Rep. Kaptur (OH) will offer an amendment to cut the $6 million for oil pipeline protection.
Please support these important amendments.
Tom Munk, for CANVRT
Emailed June 4, 2002
Dear Rep. David Price,
Thank you for voting for Reps. McGovern's(MA) and Skelton's (MO) amendment
to the bill which would have maintained the current restrictions barring
U.S. counter-narcotics aid from being used for counter-insurgency or
counter-terror purposes in Colombia, but which was defeated.
Members will be voting again on U.S. policy towards Colombia later this
summer or fall as the FY2003 Foreign Operations Appropriations moves through
Congress. I urge you to vote the same way that you did last week.
Thank you,
Tom Munk, for the Committee for an Active Non-Violent Response to Terrorism of the Chapel Hill Friends' Meeting (Quaker)