ICE-ALCATEL SCANDAL
'Angry' Pacheco Feels Betrayed
President Abel Pacheco said Tuesday he would wait until investigators confront his predecessor, Miguel Angel Rodríguez, in a corruption scandal before taking any further action to oust him from the top post at the Organization of American States.

The statement came a day after he sent a letter to former Costa Rican president and now Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Miguel Angel Rodríguez, demanding he step down as secretary general of the 34-member hemispheric organization amid allegations that Rodríguez accepted money from the French telecommunications company, Alcatel.

Rodríguez, who assumed the OAS post last month, answered with a letter indirectly accusing Pacheco of violating the presumption of his innocence and vowing to defend himself before the country's legal system. Rodríguez was traveling Tuesday to survey hurricane damage in Grenada and Haiti.

Pacheco, who succeeded Rodríguez as president in May 2002, said he expected authorities to summon Rodríguez ''in the next day' and he expected a timely response.

He said the scandal is an affront to lobbying efforts by Costa Rica to obtain the OAS post. Rodríguez is the first Central American to head the OAS, based in Washington.

''I feel angry, enraged,'' Pacheco, who like Rodríguez belongs to the  Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), said. ``I feel betrayed.''

Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar said Pacheco's administration has not ruled out calling for a special session of the OAS general assembly to vote on Rodríguez's resignation, which would require support from others.

In a nonbinding resolution passed by Costa Rica's unicameral Legislative Assembly late Monday, lawmakers called on Rodríguez to step down immediately and on the executive branch to seek his ouster if he refused.

Forty-three of the 47 Costa Rican legislators have demanded his resignation.

President Pacheco said that if the former president does not resign, Costa Rica would, as an OAS member, seek his removal.

Rodriguez's corruption charges shocked Costa Rica.

Pacheco on Monday sent Rodriguez a letter asking him 'iIn the interest of Costa Rica's good name . . . I ask you to separate yourself from the post [of OAS secretary general] . . . and return to the country to face the corresponding responsibilities.''

Pacheco has been quoted as saying, "we collaborated greatly in his campaign for the OAS, and now we feel great pain and great disappointment.'' Pacheco comments were spoken to reporters while the president waited at the airport for his wife's return from a meeting of the 'first wives of Central America' in Honduras.

Rodríguez shot back in a letter to Pacheco that he released late Monday, saying he hoped the president understood ``the terrible destructiveness that . . . powers, formal or informal, give themselves the right to pre-judge.''

''I can assure you that I will carry out my defense with all the loftiness and rectitude that my country and its judicial branch merit,'' he added, but he set no time for testifying before Costa Rican prosecutors.

A U.S. State Department spokesman in Washington said "the matter is with the Costa Rican legal system, and it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.''

The OAS charter stipulates that the secretary general and others in the organization `"shall enjoy the privileges and immunities corresponding to their positions and necessary for the independent performance of their duties.''

But it is not clear whether that immunity would apply to actions occurring prior to OAS appointments.

The scandal cast a dark cloud over Rodríguez, regarded as a brilliant economist who managed to maintain modest, 4 percent economic growth for Costa Rica during his 1998-2002 tenure and helped push forward a new labor law and an innovative paternity law to go after men who didn't support their children.

The scandal also threatened to tarnish the image of the OAS, which managed to shed some of its reputation for ineffectiveness under Rodríguez's predecessor, former Colombian President César Gaviria.

If Rodríguez steps down, the assistant secretary general would take over temporarily.