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US plans to increase the number of troops in Colombia is drawing opposition, not just from left-wing populist leaders in the region but also from moderate governments like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva prompting Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to tour the region to try to ease concerns.
Colombia, Washington's main ally in the region, says the deal with Washington is aimed at strengthening anti-drug efforts.
The United States is in talks with Uribe's government about relocating US drug interdiction flight operations to Colombia after being kicked out of neighboring Ecuador. Colombia expects to sign a deal this month after a final round of talks in Washington.
The plan is expected to increase the number of US troops in Colombia above the current total of less than 300 but not above 800, the maximum permitted under an existing military pact, officials said.
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and allies from Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua accuse the US of setting up a military platform in Colombia from which to "attack" its neighbors.
But other countries also expressed concern, mainly Brazil and Chile which are seen as serious referents from the region.
"I don't like the idea of a US base in the region," said Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
Uribe will meet with Lula, Chile's Michelle Bachelet and other South American leaders starting on Tuesday.
Bachelet called the Colombia-US talks "disquieting" and said the proposal should be discussed at the August 10 meeting of the South American Unasur group of nations.
The meeting will be held in Ecuador, which has broken off diplomatic relations with Colombia over a 2008 bombing raid targeting Colombian rebels who were camped out on Ecuador's side of the border.
"Where was the hysteria when these operations were being run out of Ecuador?" said a high-level official in Colombia's Defense ministry who asked that his name not be used.
"Mexico is having the worst security crisis in its history due to the drug trade and people are saying we should not help them by doing interdiction operations. It's ridiculous," the official said.
Mercopress
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, ever hear about "projection of power"? Even if Colombia is a sovereign nation, a US base there would project US influence way beyond Colombia. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
This isn't about YOU Brazil. It's about the FARC and cocaine.