Fears of violence marred today's opening of a summit gathering US President Barack ObamaOn this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today...
and Latin American leaders when four bombs went off here and in the Colombian capital.
Two of the crude devices went
kaboom!in the resort city of Cartagena just hours after the US leader arrived for regional talks set to focus on the vicious drug wars stalking the region.
Two other small bombs went
kaboom!near the US Embassy in Bogota, in an area which is also home to important government buildings.
"Nobody was killed, nobody was injured, and there was no damage," a police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the bombings, but Bogota and other major cities have been the site of urban guerrilla attacks for decades.
The
Revolutionary Armed Forces of ColombiaFARC or FARC-EP, is either a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization or a narco mob based in Colombia. It claims to represent the rural poor in a struggle against Colombia's wealthier classes, and opposes United States influence in Colombia, neo-imperialism, monopolization of natural resources by multinational corporations, and the usual raft of complaints. It funds itself principally through ransom kidnappings, taxation of the drug trade, extortion, shakedowns, and
donations. It has lately begun calling itself
Bolivarianand is greatly admired by Venezuela's President-for-Life Chavez, who seemingly fantasizes about living in the woods and kidnapping people himself. He provides FARC with safe areas along the border.
(FARC) -- now the Americas longest running insurgency -- has been at war with the Colombian government since 1964 and is believed to have 9,000 fighters in mountainous and jungle areas, according to government estimates.
Two issues -- the pros and cons of drug legalisation and Cuba's continued exclusion from the summit -- were expected to dominate the summit agenda, highlighting the growing disconnect between Washington and an increasingly assertive and independent Latin American bloc led by powerhouse Brazil.