GREEN IN COLOMBIA

The Feb. 25 wire service article about the abduction of Colombian
presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt left out vital information that
would help readers put this heinous event in broader political context.
Ingrid Betancourt is the Green Party candidate in Colombia, and she is
fighting for some of the same issues that Greens here in North Carolina and
across the nation are fighting for.

Greens in the United States have joined Betancourt and the Colombian Greens
in opposing the role of the U.S. government in training the Colombian
military in police terror and torture tactics at the School of the
Americas, the destruction of large amounts of Colombia's fertile land in
the name of the War on Drugs, and other policies that have terrorized and
imposed poverty on the people and ruined the environment. Is Ingrid
Betancourt's abduction part of another CIA covert operation meant to win
international Green support for President Bush's War on Drugs in Colombia?

Those of us N.C. Greens who support the findings of the recent Witness For
Peace investigatory trip to Colombia, led by Gail Phares of Raleigh, want
other North Carolinians to know the broader context of this most recent
terrorist event in Colombia and its relationship to U.S. policy.

Ed King, Pittsboro