30/08/09
Unasur: Correa requests urgent meeting with Obama regarding Colombia agreement

2009-08-28 - BARILOCHE, Argentina. – On Friday, the Ecuadorian leader Rafael Correa proposed an urgent meeting with the US President, Barack Obama, to discuss the use of military bases in Colombia.

Correa, as President pro tempore of Unasur, proposed this meeting to his peers after hearing the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, who read out a document which he alleges was written in the Pentagon, and which states that the US Southern Command considers that seven bases in Colombia can be used as a starting point for sending “expeditionary” forces to places of strategic US interest in South America.

Correa stated "I am most concerned and cannot accept that a United States document should treat us as their back yard. I would like to propose a first motion in this special meeting: that, as a matter of urgency, the Unasur Defence Council submit a report to us, on the basis of which we request an urgent meeting with President Obama”.

The Unasur leaders are in a special emergency meeting called in the city of Bariloche, in the Patagonian region of Argentina, to discuss the implications of an agreement between Bogotá and Washington concerning the use of Colombian military bases by US troops.

By: Agencies Date of publication: 28/08/09