(Forwarded) CLINTON GO HOME! ================= Call of the Secretariat of the Central General Staff of FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - Armed Forces of the People) on the occasion of the visit of the US President to Colombia, 23 August, 2000 --------------------------------------------------------------------- The widely promoted visit of the US president to Colombia will bring nothing positive for our country. This is why the FARC-EP, notwithstanding the stance of the Nariño Palace, and in the name of millions of compatriots, declares Clinton's presence on Colombian territory persona non grata. Clinton is not coming for peace. He is coming neither to support the efforts for a political solution to the conflict, nor to suspend the ruthless policies of the International Monetary Fund. Clinton is coming to Cartagena to put the Plan Colombia into effect, which, more than acounter-insurgency plan, is a plan against Colombia for imperialist geopolitics. Plan Colombia, contrived in English, is a serious threat to our peace process, and represents a real danger of generalising the war and increasing Yankee military intervention, which may lead to its Vietnamisation. This calls for immediate solidarity among our neighbouring countries, and more war materials and technological equipment sold by the US military industrial complex, which in turn will stoke up a criminal arms race among poor countries, a greater budget for a sepoy army violating human rights and executing State paramilitarism, more North American advisors like those who trained the paramilitaries in Barrancon Guaviare who caused the Mapiripan massacre, greater repression of poor peasants, and more fumigation with chemical andbiological substances causing rampant devastation to the Amazon, the ecological patrimony of humanity. With Plan Colombia, North American imperialism seeks to consolidate, through military intervention, neo-liberal economic policies, and seeksto open a loophole in our sovereignty to give way to impositions of the International Monetary Fund without their being resisted. This will mean more privatisation, progressively higher unemployment, miserable wages, and all the discounts and guarantees for exploiting our natural resources and increasing foreign investment. This is why the Plan also backs the unjust and violent Colombian State and its administration. Washington knows it can count on a servile capitulating oligarchy which, to preserve its privileges and power, is capable not only of offering more "sweat and tears" to the population, but of handing over the entire country and our sovereignty to the insatiable voracity of imperialism. Nevertheless, Washington must also know that there is a Colombian people poised to risk its all for the mother country. Since Plan Colombia is also a US attempt to dissuade the insurgency, we can reaffirm that the FARC, backed by the people, is ready for the ultimatum. Our unbreakable will to fight is indissolubly linked to social justice, true democracy, complete sovereignty, and the new State of the people and for the people. We call on Colombians that we should express in various ways, with a true sense of patriotism and dignity, and inspired by sentiments for anti-imperialism and Latin American unity instilled in us by our liberator Simón Bolivar, our rejection of the imperialist visitor and his Plan Colombia as well as the oligarchy which sells out the country. WITH BOLIVAR, FOR PEACE AND NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY THE SECRETARIAT OF THE CENTRAL COMMAND FARC, ARMY OF THE PEOPLE The Mountains of Colombia, August 23, 2000
