AP (with additional material by Reuters). 9 January 2002. Colombian Government Says Rebels Abandoned Peace Talks.
BOGOTA -- Colombia's government on Wednesday ended three-year old peace talks with FARC rebels and said it was giving the leftist guerrillas 48 hours to vacate a demilitarized zone in the country's south. Colombia put its army on high alert Wednesday and said leftist rebels had abandoned peace talks, but a rebel spokesman said the government peace negotiator was lying. In either case it was clear peace talks were near total collapse. Pastrana called for an urgent meeting Wednesday evening with his top generals and Cabinet members. The U.S.-backed military put all its troops on high alert, army spokesman Maj. Jose Espejo told The Associated Press. Fifteen tanks and 10 trucks loaded with soldiers were seen moving Wednesday night through the streets of Bogota toward a military base in the south of the capital, closer to rebel territory. The only airline - Satena - that has regular flights into the biggest town in a rebel safe haven said it was suspending those flights. The president's top peace envoy, Camilo Gomez, said in a nationally broadcast statement that the rebels indicated that within 48 hours they would surrender the huge safe haven the government granted them as a site for the talks. "The government gives the guerrillas 48 hours to leave the main municipalities (of the demilitarized zone)," Gomez said. The rebels have said in the past that if the talks failed, the government could have the safe haven. Even without it, the FARC - believed to have some 16,000 combatants - maintain a presence in about 70 percent of rural areas in the Andean nation. After Gomez made his declarations, FARC spokesman Raul Reyes told reporters Gomez was lying. "He lied to the country and the international community when he said the FARC had asked for 48 hours ... for the armed forces to enter the zone after not coming to an agreement," Reyes said. He accused Gomez of "throwing gasoline on the fire at a time when the future of the nation requires humility, prudence and greatness." Gomez has spent the past several days in the safe haven of jungle and pastureland in southern Colombia, trying to resuscitate the talks which the rebels walked out of last October. The rebels had suspended the talks after the military increased patrols along the borders of the zone. Reyes told reporters inside the safe haven that the rebels wanted to give the government until Jan. 20 to pull back the troops. "There are still several days and maybe a solution is possible," Reyes said. Pastrana has renewed rebel control of the Switzerland-sized safe haven several times since granting it, and it was set to expire again on Jan. 20. Gomez said he understood after his latest talks with the rebels that they would abandon the whole peace process. "After hearing the FARC in different rounds of negotiations in the past few days the government understands that this insurgent group will not continue the peace process, and therefore they have asked for 48 hours" to vacate the towns inside the safe haven, Gomez said. Gomez said the government would guarantee the safety of the people within the safe haven. But a municipal human rights official in the town of Meseta, inside the rebel zone, said people there were "scared" by the possibility the haven might be canceled "We've been doing well, despite the neglect of the government," Arteaga said. "All the residents are very scared now." On Tuesday, sensing a possible collapse of the talks, the FARC blamed failure on the military and government, and threatened to intensify the war. The FARC earlier faxed letters to the military, the Congress, the Catholic Church, the United Nations and others making the threat, and calling the military "enemies of the people." Many observers feared that if talks failed, all-out war would follow in the 38-year-old conflict that already kills about 3,500 people every year. "The decision surprised me ... We will see a stage of higher intensity warfare," said Daniel Garcia Pena, former government peace advisor. Military analysts say Colombia's armed forces are understaffed and underequipped to defeat the FARC on the battlefield, despite more than $1 billion in mainly U.S. military aid flowing into the country for the "Plan Colombia." Analysts predict a bloody stalemate, as the army retakes towns in the enclave and the rebels escalate bombings and attacks from jungle strongholds they have occupied for decades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
