There will be no United States military base in Colombia, the country’s Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez said Tuesday.
Ever since Ecuador expelled the U.S. from Manta, from where the U.S. Military conducts operations in its fight against drug trafficking, rumors were that the base could be moved to Colombia, a close ally of the U.S. in the war on drugs.
But according to Bermude, “nothing was said” about the subject in the meeting between Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama Monday “and to be perfectly clear, there will no new U.S. base in Colombia.”
The United States did already earmark US$46 million to expand its activities at Palanquero Air Base north of Colombia’s capital Bogota.