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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2007
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>> COLOMBIAN RADICALS
Bananas fund terrorism
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The well-known fruit supplier Chiquita Brands international recently agreed to pay $25 million for using a Colombian terrorist group to protect their farmers.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON  Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it had agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid a Colombian terrorist group for protection in a volatile farming region.
The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with terrorist organizations in Colombia.
In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.
The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombias civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing group as a terrorist organization in September 2001.
Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. The company also made similar payments to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, according to prosecutors. The group also is known as FARC, the acronym for its Spanish name.
Leftist rebels and far-right para
militaries have fought viciously over Colombia's banana-growing region. Most companies have extensive security operations to protect employees there.
"The information filed today is
part of a plea agreement, which we view as a reasoned solution to the dilemma the company faced several years ago," Chiquita's chief executive, Fernando Aguirre, said in a statement.
>> ATTORNEY GENERAL
Republican wants Gonzales fired
BY LAURIE KELLMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire on Wednesday became the first Republican in Congress to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' dismissal, hours after President Bush expressed confidence in his embattled Cabinet officer.
Gonzales has been fending off Democratic demands for his firing in the wake of disclosures surrounding the ouster of eight U.S. attorneys' dismissals. Democrats
have characterized as a politically motivated purge.
Support from many Republicans had been muted, but there was no outright GOP call for his dismissal until now.
"I think the president should replace him," Sununu said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think the attorney general should be fired."
Bush, at a news conference in Mexico, told reporters when asked about the controversy: "Mistakes were made. And I'm frankly not happy about them."
But the president expressed confidence in Gonzales, a longtime friend, and defended the firings. "What Al did and what the Justice Department did was appropriate," he said.
What was "mishandled," Bush said, was the justice Department's release of some but not all details of how the firings were carried out.
The developments unfolded as presidential aides labored to protect White House political director Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Miers from congressional subpoenas.
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IRAQ
Democrats call for troop withdrawal Bush threatens with power of veto
BY DAVID ESPO ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Democratically backed legislation to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq cleared its first Senate hurdle Wednesday, but Republicans confidently predicted they would soon defeat it and President Bush backed them up with a veto threat.
The legislation, calling for combat troops to return home over the next 12 months, "would hobble American commanders in the field and substantially endanger America's strategic objective of a unified federal democratic Iraq," the White House said in a written statement.
The strong veto message underscored the intensifying struggle between the administration and the new Democratic-controlled Congress and came on a day in which the Pentagon conceded in
President Bush and other administration officials have avoided saying that U.S. troops had been thrust into the midst in
a report that "some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a civil war."
Democrats in the House and Senate are advancing different bills calling for the withdrawal of troops. Bush has threatened to veto both.
a civil war among Iraqis.
That plan faces its first test vote Thursday in the Appropriations Committee, and Democrats circulated a letter of support from retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander who ran for president in 2004.
"We have an obligation to stand up for our troops and stand up to our president when he stubbornly refuses to change course in Iraq."
In the House, Democratic leaders said they were building support behind legislation to require the withdrawal of troops by Sept. 1, 2008, if not sooner.
By whatever name, the war has so far has claimed the lives of more than 3,100 U.S. troops, cost more than $300 billion and propelled congressional Democrats to power in last fall's elections.
In contrast with the House bill, the Senate measure lacks a firm deadline for an end to U.S. participation in combat. It says a withdrawal should begin within 120 days "with the goal
EDWARD M. KENNEDY Senator, D-Mass.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., another vocal critic of the war, said, "The American people are far ahead of the administration We
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said the legislation does not go far enough, but added he intends to support it because "it does not allow the president's misguided policies to continue. It does not tacitly reauthorize the war."
of redeploying, by March 31, 2008, all United States combat forces from Iraq except" for those needed for non-combat roles.
The Wisconsin Democrat said he would keep trying to press his own measure, which calls for limiting the use of defense funds in Iraq to achieving a troop withdrawal.
The only Iraq-related vote of the day was an 89-9 procedural roll call that cleared the way for a formal debate on the legislation in the Senate.
But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said passage of the
have an obligation to stand up for our troops and stand up to our president when he stubbornly refuses to change course in Iraq.
withdrawal measure "would be absolutely fatal to our mission in Iraq" and he sought to rebut Democratic supporters with their own words.
He quoted Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the party's point man for the pending legislation, as saying in 2005 that setting a time line was "not a wise decision because it only empowers those who don't want us there, and it doesn't work well to do that."
McConnell also quoted New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a presidential contender, as having said in September 2005.
"I don't believe it's smart to set a date for withdrawal. I don't think you should ever telegraph your intentions to the enemy so they can await you," she said.
Democrats who have made similar comments "know just as well as I do that this is what the terrorists have been waiting for and just what our allies in Iraq and the entire region of the world have feared," McConnell said.
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