CONFLICT-COLOMBIA: Paramilitaries Threaten Peace Talks with FARC

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, Jun 22 2000 (IPS) - The peace process in Colombia faced a new threat Wednesday after right-wing paramilitary groups kidnapped a lawmaker and converted a government representative in the peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) into a “military target”.

The head of the United Self-Defence forces of Colombia (AUC) unbrella group, Carlos Castaño, urged government delegates to the talks to “seriously, and in a committed manner, defend and preserve the legitimate rights” of Colombians.

Castaño claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of parliamentary Deputy Guillermo Valencia, the brother of Senator Fabio Valencia, a government representative in the negotiations with FARC — the largest rebel group — who AUC accuses of sympathising with the guerrillas.

The paramilitaries said they would only release Deputy Valencia if his brother, a member of the governing Conservative Party, “issues a public report on what advances have been made towards peace for Colombians in the more than 20 months of negotiations with the guerrillas.”

Castaño also criticised Fabio Valencia for supposedly “openly backing false and tendentious declarations by Raúl Reyes (a FARC leader) to the detriment of the interests of the nation and of honest Colombians.”

At a conference held in the Spanish city of Alcalá de Henares by the Organisation of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Reyes and the government negotiators, including Valencia, said their aim was to reach a negotiated peace for Colombia “without foreign meddling and with social justice.”

According to Castaño, Valencia backed the guerrilla spokesman, who stated in the conference that “the FARC are not drug traffickers,” but that “the enemies of peace are” — supposedly a direct reference to AUC.

The AUC communique released by Castaño over ‘Radionet’ station was condemned by the president’s High Commissioner for Peace Camilo Gómez, who said “the state peace policy will never be subordinate to what outlawed armed organisations try to impose.”

Gómez called for the immediate release of Deputy Valencia, whose kidnapping he described as “a frontal attack on the state and its institutions” by AUC, which he accused of violating “all of the standards of humanitarian law.”

The other two government representatives in the peace talks with FARC, Luis Giraldo and Alfonso López, also condemned Valencia’s kidnapping as a direct attack on the peace process.

Giraldo told IPS that the government negotiators “will not accept this kind of pressure” from AUC, because if they did they would also become hostages of the paramilitary group.

López, meanwhile, said the AUC communique “dealt a tough blow to the peace process, at a time when all Colombians are hoping for national reconciliation.”

The AUC statement and the pressure the paramilitaries are exerting on farmers in the northeast to get them to oppose the withdrawal of state security forces from three municipalities, in order to pave the way for peace talks with the second largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), were interpreted by other analysts as part of AUC’s continued attempts to gain political recognition.

AUC, which according to Castaño groups around 11,000 combatants, was created by landowners and members of the business community in the mid-1980s with army support, to fight the insurgents.

But the paramilitary group was declared illegal in 1989 due to its ties with drug traffickers and rights violations like murders of trade unionists and social activists.

In an earlier interview broadcast by the Caracol TV station, Castaño admitted that AUC was financed by drug trafficking activities, and he asked for an amnesty for his fighters if the peace talks with the guerrillas progressed.

After the negotiations with FARC got underway, the paramilitary groups launched an escalation of attacks that have affected the civilian population as well as the insurgents.

Due to the fact that paramilitary forces are blamed for the lion’s share of rights abuses in conflict-torn Colombia, local and international rights groups are staunchly opposed to the possibility of them being granted political status.