Colombia picks defense, interior aides
BOGOTA -- Two businessmen with little political experience took over Colombia's defense and interior ministries yesterday, amid a surprise Cabinet shake-up.
Colombia's first female defense minister, Martha Lucia Ramirez, stepped down Sunday. She read a statement describing how security in the South American country had improved under her leadership, but she gave no explanation for her sudden departure.
President Alvaro Uribe's office also gave no reason, but government officials said privately that Ramirez had been forced out.
Local news media speculated that she was a scapegoat following a spat with neighboring Ecuador over Uribe's public allegations that corrupt Ecuadoran military officials were selling weapons to Colombian rebels, including a rocket launcher used in an attack in Bogota last month.
In an open letter Saturday to President Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador, Uribe said, "The grave accusations . . . must not be interpreted as an affront on the Ecuadoran armed forces, which deserve all our trust."
Gutierrez accepted the clarification yesterday and said he would meet Uribe to discuss normalizing relations. He said Ecuador's ambassador, who had been recalled in protest, would return to Bogota tomorrow.
Ramirez left the government just days after Justice and Interior Minister Fernando Londono resigned amid disputes with Congress.
Uribe named Jorge Alberto Uribe, a US-educated economist who has no military experience, to head the Defense Ministry, and Sabas Pretelt, head of the National Federation of Retailers, to take over the Interior and Justice Ministry.
Both new Cabinet members need to be fast learners to prevent Colombia's hard-driving administration from faltering.
Pretelt pledged to help push Uribe's reform program through congress. "You will see that we will put management, time, and energy into every proposal so that they will be passed," he was quoted as saying by the official SNE news agency yesterday.
The new defense minister, who is an old friend of the president but is not related to him, said he was surprised at being chosen, but he vowed to press on with efforts to crush the insurgency.
"What I could not do is refuse this offer and carry for the rest of my life the responsibility of having said 'no' to a man who has sacrificed so much for the country," he told reporters Monday. Uribe was previously the chairman of an insurance firm and studied economics at Georgetown University in Washington.
