LETTER FROM GUATEMALA (6)

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 GUATEMALA 000312

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SUBJECT: LETTER FROM GUATEMALA (6)

REF: GUATEMALA 0294

Another painful anniversary noted
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1. (SBU) January 31 marked the 25th anniversary of the fire
at the Spanish Embassy that killed 37 persons. In a land
that has suffered more than its share of grim tragedies over
the last 50 years, this particular incident remains vividly
controversial. Bishop Gonzalo de Villa, former head of
Landivar University, lost his mother, who was taking care of
some paperwork that day in the Spanish Embassy. Also killed
in the fire was the father of Nobel Peace Prize winner
Rigoberta Menchu. He had led a small group of indigenous
from Uspantan, Quiche, to Guatemala City to protest delays in
land redistribution. There are conflicting versions of how
events unfolded that day, but whether by invitation or
deceit, the indigenous ended up at the Spanish Embassy along
with some radical students and some visiting VIPs, including
a former vice president. When the military government got
wind of the "peaceful takeover" at the Embassy, security
forces were deployed to rescue the embassy and the
"hostages."


2. (SBU) Critics of the military regime believe the forces
set off the fire while storming the embassy. Others say the
fire was set off by students inside the embassy who lobbed
molotov cocktails to deter the security forces. In any case,
37 persons died inside the diplomatic mission that day.
Quite a few people here hold Spanish Ambassador Cajal y
Lopez, who escaped with his life, responsible for the
tragedy, citing evidence that he invited the protestors to
the embassy and masterminded the "peaceful takeover" to
embarrass the regime. The facts were never clarified, as the
government closed its investigation about a month after the
fire, leading many people to hold the president, General
Lucas Garcia, and his security team responsible.


3. (SBU) Recently, however, a Spanish court resurrected
hopes that justice might be done by requesting the
extradition from Mexico of Donaldo Alvarez, who as Interior
Minister at the time, had overseen the storming of the
embassy.

The bishop gets some security
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4. (SBU) In a recent letter, we reported that Bishop Alvaro
Ramazzini had locked horns with President Berger over the
issue of strip mining for gold. We noted the makings of a
rapprochement, as Berger and VP Stein met with Ramazzini, and
they agreed to work together on a new mining law. Over the
ensuing weekend, however, Ramazzini was once again in the
press, this time because of press reports that an unnamed
former officer of the EMP, the military's now-dismantled
presidential security staff, claimed an unidentified woman
had offered him $50,000 to assassinate Bishop Ramazzini. The
threat against Ramazzini conjured up memories of the unsolved
1998 murder of Bishop Gerardi. Although it was never
determined whether that murder was a crime of passion,
politics, or lucre, it gave the Arzu administration a black
eye. Perhaps with that in mind, the Berger administration
quickly reached out to its erstwhile antagonist and offered
him his choice of protection by the police, presidential
security, or armed private bodyguards. The bishop, who said
he was no stranger to death threats but felt alarmed by this
plot, accepted the offer of presidential security, which was
very much in evidence at Ramazzini's most recent public
appearances.

Mining Issue: Truce with the Church in Sight?
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5. (SBU) Berger's war of words with Bishop Ramazzini
escalated when Cardinal Quezada Toruno and the Episcopal
Conference rallied to the Bishop's defense. Quezada used
Sunday Mass on January 23 to declare solidarity with
Ramazzini's position against open-pit mining and criticize
Berger for accusations that were "false and unjust." Media
commentators joined the fray, with a few supporting the
bishops' principled position while others dug up the Church's
history in Guatemala of political involvement and called on
the Church to stick to more spiritual matters. Vice
President Stein (who was, once upon a time, a Jesuit
seminarian) quietly engaged in the dialogue after President
Human Rights Commissioner Frank Larue, apparently
freelancing, called for a national dialogue and high-level
commission to review mining policy.


6. (SBU) Since then, the issue has slowly faded from the
headlines -- neither side retracting anything said but
refraining from attacking the other. The acting president of
business association CACIF told us February 3 that "moderate"
bishops within the Episcopal Conference asserted themselves
to insist on a middle ground that would permit responsible
mining as a way to generate income in poor areas. That same
night, Berger and a number of his Cabinet were conspicuously
present at the opening of the new Ecclesiastical Museum, and
a beaming Cardinal and the President graced the front page of
"Diario de Centro America," the official government
newspaper. The compromise appears to be that existing
contracts will be respected, and that changes to the mining
law will be reviewed.

Portillo's finance minister goes to trial
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7. (SBU) PolCouns and FSN Political assistant attended the
opening of the trial of Eduardo Weymann, the former finance
minister under the Portillo administration who has been
charged with document fraud and embezzlement. Weymann's case
is the first of several high-profile cases involving Portillo
officials, including his vice president and the head of the
internal revenue service (SAT),to be tried in court. Some
critics have complained that over the past year the
prosecutor's office has devoted too much effort to going
after the Portillo officials, alleging that the motivation
was political. The first morning of the Weymann trial left
us with the impression that the special prosecutor for
corruption, Celvin Galindo, may not have much of a case. The
39-year-old Weymann, who was the wunderkind of the Portillo
team, has been under arrest since April 23 for signing the
minutes of a meeting that never took place. The minutes
purport to document that the SAT board had authorized on
December 30, 2003, the transfer of all remaining funds from
the SAT budget to the "office supplies" account, which then
financed a year-end buying spree of almost $5 million in
office supplies from a number of fake companies. The money
ended up not in Weymann's pockets but in those of the SAT
superintendent, Marco Tulio Abadio Molina and his family
members. The office supplies never materialized.


8. (SBU) With great fanfare, the prosecution called its
first expert witness, a handwriting expert (who claimed he
had been trained by, among others, the U.S. Department of
Justice). The prosecutor and two of his associates then
tried everyone's patience by getting the handwriting expert
to confirm repeatedly, but by means of different
formulations, that the signature on the minutes was indeed
Weymann's. The defense attorney then popped the prosecutor's
bubble by stating, in one brief declarative sentence, that
her client had never denied signing the minutes. Weymann
recently changed attorneys, claiming publicly that he had
been ill served by his previous counsel. Word on the street
is that Weymann wanted to distance himself from crack
criminal attorney Fernando "Skippy" Linares during public
proceedings because Linares is best known for representing
organized crime boss Ortega Menaldo and having his U.S. visa
yanked. Weymann did not look far afield, however: his new
attorney is a partner in Skippy's firm.


9. (SBU) In cross-examining the next three witnesses, an
auditor and two members of the SAT board, it became clear
that the real culprit was Abadio, and the prosecutor was
going to have a very difficult time proving Weymann had
benefited or intended to benefit from Abadio's scam or had
wittingly participated in it. Weymann has already been
punished, to the extent that he has been tried and convicted
in the press and has spent nine months in jail. It should
also be noted that the judge originally presiding over this
case (who died in a December traffic accident) set the bail
for Weymann at almost $5 million, the same amount that Abadio
allegedly took from this scheme. Weymann was unable to meet
bail, and many observers attributed the exceptionally high
amount (by Guatemalan standards) as proof that the case had
been politicized.

FRG portraying GANA successors as inept
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10. (SBU) We had breakfast February 3 with FRG leaders Zury
Rios Montt, Antonio Arenales and Aristides Crespo. Arenales
is the new head of the External Relations Committee in
Congress and Crespo is head of the FRG bloc, so we impressed
upon them the importance of moving with alacrity on the new
data protection bill that the Berger administration sent in
tandem with the CAFTA bill to Congress January 28. They, on
the other hand, were quite eager to impress upon us the
dilatory treatment given to the legislation by the
congressional leadership, headed by Congress President Jorge
Mendez Herbruger (JMH) of the governing GANA coalition.
According to these FRG leaders, who took credit for helping
JMH get the presidency of the congress, he had been quite the
ingrate with them. They believed the generics bill had not
yet had its first reading in plenary because JMH, having
alienated some of his own bloc members, was now tiptoeing on
eggshells. That said, they expected the bill and CAFTA would
be read in Congress later that day and assigned to committee
(which indeed occurred),and they committed to support both.



11. (SBU) The Ambassador took the opportunity to press
Arenales on prospects for congressional approval of the new
and improved agreement for an office of the High Commissioner
on Human Rights. Arenales noted that the government had not
yet sent the agreement to Congress but that he had
unofficially seen the text of the agreement. Arenales, who
had been the leading opponent last year to the previous OHCHR
agreement, said his juridical and political points of
objection had been addressed and did not anticipate problems
in gaining congressional approval of the agreement. The
Ambassador also urged quick action on an Article 98
agreement. Arenales noted that the administration had not
yet sent it to Congress but assured the Ambassador that it
would be approved by his committee. He said the risk for
Article 98 was that the Human Rights Committee might insist
on reviewing it and could issue a recommendation against it.


ANN fissures cause Nineth to lose a perch
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12. (SBU) We met with Nineth Montenegro, who was recently
declared "Person of the Year" for 2004 by leading daily
newspaper Prensa Libre. Montenegro, whose first husband was
a casualty of the internal armed conflict, is a prominent
human rights activist who has used her seat in Congress to
become a formidable watchdog on the military budget. Indeed,
Montenegro deserves much credit for exposing some major
corruption among the military and guiding the government's
successful efforts to open up the military budget to public
scrutiny. Unlike so many of her colleagues, Montenegro is a
serious, hard-working interlocutor whose discretion we
greatly appreciate.


13. (SBU) We were therefore somewhat disappointed to see
Montenegro forced out of her chairmanship of the Human Rights
Committee in Congress as a result of a deepening split among
the six members of her left-of-center ANN bloc, headed by
former guerrilla Pablo Monsanto. Committee chairmanships are
doled out to parties to decide, and in the case of the Human
Rights Committee, the ANN decided to take the committee
chairmanship away from Montenegro and give it to Maria
Reinhardt. Montenegro is by far the most popular of the ANN
deputies and has struck an increasingly moderate stance, even
publicly declaring herself to be a "centrist," much to the
annoyance of Monsanto, who was active in the bloodiest
faction of the URNG and is believed to have participated in
the 1968 assassination of U.S. Ambassador Mein. People here
are speculating about when, not if, Montenegro and her two
ANN allies will leave the ANN and in which party they might
end up. Perhaps as a result of her ANN experience,
Montenegro is now advocating legislation to force parties to
adopt greater transparency and internal democracy.

HAMILTON