Prospects for peace negotiations with Latin America’s last major rebel army have all but disappeared after Colombia tricked the guerrillas into handing over their most prized captives without firing a shot.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe promised after the triumphant recovery of 15 hostages including kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three US citizens that he seeks “a path to peace, total peace.”
On Monday, Uribe said that “at whatever moment FARC [the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] rebels want dialogue, we’re disposed.”
But that doesn’t mean Uribe is ready to swap rebel prisoners for the 29 remaining high-value hostages, or make any other concessions to end a conflict that has claimed well over 100,000 lives over the last 44 years. His actions — and the pronouncements of his top aides — suggest he seeks nothing short of complete surrender.
“If they want peace, [they should] demobilize and disarm,” Uribe’s closest advisor, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, said in an interview.
Uribe’s domestic approval rating is above 80 percent and, thanks in large measure to billions of dollars in US military cooperation, the leftist FARC have never been weaker.
In part because the rebels no longer hold Betancourt — a cause celebre in Europe — or any other foreigners, Uribe apparently no longer feels the political pressure to keep Europe involved in trying to end Colombia’s class-based conflict. So he has frozen international mediation efforts, accusing the Swiss and French envoys at its forefront of overstepping their mandate in dealing with the FARC.
Since the July 2 raid, Uribe’s conservative government has leaked rebel-penned documents supporting its claim that the envoys — Swiss emissary Jean-Pierre Gontard in particular — were sympathetic to the rebels.
“Generally speaking, they had always been a nuisance,” Gaviria said.
Such language indicates government officials “aren’t interested in establishing serious contact” with the rebels, independent political analyst Leon Valencia said.
“Without mediation and without an international presence, there is no possibility of arriving at any accords,’’ he said.
Colombia’s chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran said on Tuesday that he would likely open a preliminary criminal probe into Gontard’s activities based on the documents, which are among thousands the government says it found in a laptop belonging to FARC foreign minister Raul Reyes after killing him in a March 1 raid on his jungle camp in Ecuador.
One 2004 message from Reyes quotes Gontard as calling Uribe “a fascist cowboy” and stressing that Switzerland had no intention of joining the US and EU in branding the FARC a terrorist organization.
The Swiss envoy also personally carried US$2,000 in June last year from Reyes to the FARC’s representative in Switzerland, two documents show.
Still other laptop documents detail French efforts to buy Betancourt’s freedom by offering asylum to the family of Reyes’ daughter and the rebels’ entire seven-man leadership, the Colombian TV network RCN reported on Tuesday.
Gontard, a 67-year-old university professor, did not respond to telephone and email requests for comment. But his government stood firmly by him, saying it had instructed its ambassador to “stop the attacks on the Swiss mediator,” who it said had pursued “only humanitarian aims” under “sometimes life-threatening conditions.”
Thomas Greminger, the senior Swiss Foreign Ministry official to whom Gontard reports, said that Gontard had been under contract for eight years — earning at least 100,000 Swiss francs (US$98,500) a year — with “a clear mandate” but some room for maneuvering.
Uribe’s preference for military options had frustrated recent efforts by the French and Swiss emissaries — as well as Colombia’s leftist neighbors — to make any headway with the rebels.
Also See: Latin America’s anti-Chavez axis
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS