COLOMBIA: Government, ELN Hold ‘Pre-Peace Talks’ in Geneva

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jul 24 2000 (IPS) - Representatives of the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) – the second-largest rebel group active in that war-torn South American country – began Monday in Switzerland to work towards an agreement on holding a future national convention to hammer out an agenda for peace talks.

The negotiations are taking place behind closed doors in Geneva, with five working groups comprised of 80 representatives of the Colombian government, the ELN, Colombian civil society and the five governments that have offered to act as mediators in the peace process: Cuba, Spain, France, Norway and Switzerland.

The Swiss government is sponsoring the two-day meeting, which it is financing to the tune of around 180,000 dollars.

Switzerland’s deputy minister of foreign relations, Franz von Däniken, said at the opening of the talks Monday that the Swiss government was confident that the delegates would reach agreement regarding how to proceed in the next stage of the dialogue.

One of the meeting’s concrete objectives is to discuss a plan to create a demilitarised zone in the area in northwestern Colombia under ELN control.

In 1998, the main guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), reached a similar agreement with President Andrés Pastrana, who ordered that all government troops pull out of the FARC-dominated area in southern Colombia.

The Pastrana administration and the FARC launched peace talks in the 42,000-sq km demilitarised area in January 1999.

The FARC declined an invitation by the Swiss government to participate in this week’s meeting in Geneva.

The “pre-peace talks” with the ELN have coincided with a fresh outbreak of violence in the region where the rebel group is active, with at least 80 people killed in fighting between the guerrillas and paramilitary forces in the northwestern Colombian department of Bolívar.

The skirmishes caused 60 peasant families to flee their homes, swelling the ranks of the roughly 3.1 million people displaced by the violence in Colombia, a country of 40 million, according to the Colombian human rights group CODHES.

When the families arrived at the nearby towns of Cantagallo, Santa Rosa and San Pablo Saturday, they said the corpses of the fighters were strewn over several square kms.

The commander of the second army division, Eduardo Santos, told IPS in Colombia that there were reports that 60 ELN guerrillas and 20 members of the paramilitary umbrella, the United Self-Defence forces of Colombia (AUC), had been killed.

“There is speculation that in order to fight (AUC chief Carlos) Castaño’s men, the ELN has allied itself with the FARC,” Santos added.

The fighting took place late last week and over the weekend in the Serranía de San Lucas mountains, in Bolívar, where the main camp of ELN leader Nicolás Rodríguez – known as “Gabino” – is located.

The municipalities of Cantagallo and San Pablo, which are near the area where the fighting broke out between the ELN and AUC, have been identified by the government and the rebel group as the zone that is to be demilitarised for future peace talks.

But local authorities, non-governmental organisations and residents in the area are opposed to the withdrawal of government forces, and have been holding protests, including a 10-day roadblock of the main highway running through the area in May.

The fighting in the Serranía de San Lucas came on top of skirmishes between the AUC and FARC in a rural part of Santa Rosa de Ituango, in the departament of Antioquia, which borders Bolívar.

Santos said the army had recovered 23 corpses in Santa Rosa de Ituango. Two of the victims were civilians – killed by FARC as AUC collaborators – and the rest were presumably paramilitaries.

The new outbreak of fighting heightens the importance and urgency of the meeting in Geneva, said Van Däniken.

In Switzerland, Colombian high commissioner for peace Camilo Gómez, designated by Pastrana, expressed the president’s determination to seek a political solution to the nearly four decades-long armed conflict. Last week, the president reiterated his call for a ceasefire, the government delegate pointed out.

The ELN’s number two, Antonio García, said he hoped the talks in Geneva would reestablish the sense of trust needed for continuing the peace process.

Two other high-ranking ELN members, Felipe Torres and Francisco Galán, are taking part in the talks along with García. Torres and Galán, who have been in prison in the city of Medellín for the past seven years, are on temporary furlough from prison, and were granted a safe-conduct by the Colombian government to travel to Switzerland.

Meanwhile, a group of families of five Colombians held captive by the ELN for almost a year and a half issued a statement demanding the release of their loved ones, whose lives, they said, were in danger.

The families declared that the hostages were sick, subjected to terror and pyschological torture, and were being held in a jungle area where fighting frequently broke out between the ELN and paramilitary groups.

The Swiss deputy minister of foreign relations issued a call to the armed groups to respect international humanitarian law and the civilian population. Kidnapping is not an acceptable manner of achieving political goals, he stressed.

With respect to the activities of paramilitary groups in Colombia, Van Däniken said that all those who do not respect the objectives of peace should be left out of the peace talks.

He also suggested that the group of five nations mediating in the dialogue with the ELN should be expanded, in order to broaden the sources of financing.

The ELN and the Colombian government first made formal contacts in June 1999 to discuss the possibility of peace talks.