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Subject:
F.A.R.C.
recoprocity1999@yahoo.com
11/24/2001 10:06:23 PM
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By Missy Ryan
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Colombia's president said on Saturday that the country's largest leftist rebel group could meet a U.N. envoy again within days in an attempt to rekindle a guttering peace process.
"The possibility of another meeting next week between members of the (rebel group) FARC and the U.N. envoy is ... very important," Andres Pastrana told reporters during a summit in Lima of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
Jan Egeland, the special U.N. envoy for Colombia, met with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known by the Spanish acronym FARC -- on Thursday in their southern enclave in an attempt to revive stalled peace talks.
The diplomat said after the FARC meeting that efforts to clinch peace, while difficult, must continue. For nearly four decades, Colombia has been involved in war. Forty thousand people have been killed in the last decade alone.
Pastrana had set a Jan. 20 deadline for a cease-fire with the FARC, but the 17,000-member group has refused to restart peace talks. It is demanding that the government reduce military monitoring and stop calling the FARC "terrorists."
The president also said representatives of the so-called Group of Friendly Countries -- Cuba, Switzerland, France, Spain and Norway -- would meet FARC rebels in the coming days in the enclave ceded to the rebels nearly three years ago as part of a deal to launch peace talks.
Pastrana said talks with the 5,000-strong National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's No. 2 rebel group, were also crucial. The government and the ELN met this week in Cuba for the first time since August -- in meetings described as "cordial" -- to try to revive peace talks.
"Restarting talks with the ELN and progressing in meetings with the FARC is going to be very important," Pastrana said.
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and the launching of a U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, the fight against terror has been high on the agenda at the Ibero-American Summit in Lima.
Leaders were due to adopt a declaration at the meeting's close later on Saturday condemning "terror in all its forms, wherever it manifests itself and by whomever it is committed."
Peruvian Foreign Minister Diego Garcia Sayan said they would also approve a special declaration "calling for a peaceful solution to the internal war affecting our neighbor Colombia."
"For Colombia ... the Ibero-American Summit's reiterated support of the peace and negotiation process is very important," Pastrana said.
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