Bush Visits Colombia Amid Protests

A red-carpet official welcome and rioting protesters greeted U.S. President George W. Bush Sunday as he stopped briefly to renew support to this strong but drug and violence-plagued U.S. ally.

Bush came to Colombia's capital for a show of confidence in President Alvaro Uribe and the country's battle against narco-terrorists. But the stop was clouded by a political scandal involving Uribe, and security jitters had Bush staying only about six hours.

Colombia deployed the largest security presence seen so far on President Bush's Latin American tour, reports CBS News correspondent Peter Maer, as 20,000 police officers helped guard the president.

As Air Force One landed at the Bogota airport, reporters spotted a "high security" alert flashing on the television monitors in the presidential aircraft, Maer reports. A U.S. Embassy advisory warned visitors of terrorism and crime. One U.S. diplomat based said, "In Bogota, paranoids live longer."

Colombian police officers stood approximately fifty feet apart along the long motorcade route from the airport to central Bogota. Officers were seen frisking people who ventured out to watch the procession, and bomb sniffing dogs checked cars. Meanwhile, armed officers on horseback also patrolled the city. Elsewhere in the city, riot police fired tear gas on anti-Bush protestors.

"The security measures are excessive," said 56-year-old Manuel Cifuentes, who runs a food stand on the Plaza de Bolivar and said he hasn't had much business in the last few days.

Colombia was the third country on the president's five-nation tour of Latin America. He began his journey in Brazil, flew here from Uruguay and was headed later Sunday to Guatemala. Bush last stops in Mexico before returning to Washington Wednesday.

Despite close ties between Uribe and Bush, the U.S. president's visit has generated considerable criticism and strong protests.

About a mile away from the presidential palace that was the site for all Bush's events, some 2,000 protesters chanted "Down with Bush" and burned American flags.

About 150 of them broke away, attacking riot police with rocks and metal barriers and ripping down lampposts. Some 200 helmeted police in full body armor responded with water cannons to reclaim the street. The president's convoy passed about 200 yards away. No injuries were immediately reported.

Friday night, a concert by former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters featured a big balloon of a pig that said "Patron Bush, Welcome to your Colombian Ranch."

It was Bogota's first visit from a sitting president since Ronald Reagan in 1982. Bush went in 2004 to coastal Cartagena, always deemed far safer than the capital of this country afflicted by civil conflict for half a century.

Bush received a red-carpet greeting by a military honor guard when his plane landed. Upon arrival in the palace courtyard, horses pranced and a large military band played the national anthems of both countries before the two presidents reviewed troops.

Following several hours of meetings with the president, Uribe pledged the "full defeat of terrorism," reports Maer. Uribe blamed terrorists for fueling the drug trafficking problem. Despite a multi-billion dollar U.S. program aimed at curtailing the drug trade, Colombia still produces an estimated 600 tons of cocaine a year.

In a clear reference to rebel groups in Colombia, Mr. Bush also said society can not tolerate people who "take innocent life to achieve political objectives." In a show of support for Uribe, President Bush said, "I appreciate your determination."

The president has indicated he will ask Congress to maintain current aid levels to Colombia at roughly $700 million annually to support the Latin American nation's fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. Colombia receives more U.S. aid than any country outside the Middle East and Afghanistan.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe noted Bush would meet with Colombians involved in various U.S programs "that help them reap the benefits of a democracy as well as demonstrate the compassion of the American people."

Ahead of Bush's visit, the Colombian law-and-order president urged for continued aid, crediting the U.S. assistance with helping to make his violence-tortured nation more peaceful and less corrupt. The United States has sent nearly $4 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia since Uribe took office in 2002.

"We haven't yet won but we are winning. And we will persist," Uribe said in an interview last week with The Associated Press.

But Democrats who now control the U.S. Congress have been asking tough questions about that aid.

Eight close Uribe allies in Colombia's Congress, as well as his hand-picked former domestic intelligence chief, have been jailed for allegedly colluding with right-wing militias in a reign of terror that nearly subverted Colombian democracy.

The scandal prompted Uribe's foreign minister to resign last month when her senator brother and father, a regional power broker, were implicated for alleged participation in the kidnapping of a political rival.

Many Democrats in the United States are expressing concern about Colombia's human rights record. They also want greater emphasis on social programs — more than 3 million have been displaced by the decades of fighting — and on bolstering an overtaxed justice system.

Colombia remains the source of more than 90 percent of the world's cocaine despite record aerial fumigation of coca crops. And the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has neither been defeated nor had any members of its leadership captured.

The paramilitaries, which gained control of the entire Caribbean coast during the past decade, demobilized two years ago under a peace pact with Uribe's government. The paramilitaries arose in response to kidnappings and extortion by leftist rebels.

Bush and Uribe also were expected to discuss a U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement now before Congress. Colombian demonstrators called for the scuttling of the pact, signed in November and currently stalled in Congress.

Meanwhile, three Americans have been held by rebels for more than four years in Colombia without the Bush administration taking routine steps toward freeing them, current and former U.S. officials say. Family members have cautioned the United States on a rescue attempt that could bring the hostages' deaths.