COLOMBIA: Rebel Group Proposes Land Mine Ban

By Constanza Vieira Reprint | | Print |

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Jun 7 2004 (IPS) - The possible release of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and an agreement to curb the use of land mines, with which the guerrillas kill hundreds of soldiers every year, could form part of eventual peace talks between the government and the country’s second-largest rebel group.

The peace proposal that the National Liberation Army (ELN) set forth to the government of right-wing President Alvaro Uribe would include a humanitarian agreement to limit the use of land mines as well as an exchange of imprisoned rebels for hostages held by the guerrillas, which would take place during a temporary bilateral ceasefire.

The proposal was announced by Francisco Galán, one of the leaders of the 3,500-member ELN, and broadcast live from the Senate by a public TV station on Jun. 4.

Galán was released from prison for one day to speak at an international forum last Friday on ”anti-personnel land mines, non-state actors and humanitarian accords” organised by Geneva Call, the Colombian parliament, and the Colombian Campaign Against Mines.

Geneva Call is an international humanitarian organisation dedicated to engaging armed non-state actors like guerrilla and paramilitary groups to respect and adhere to humanitarian norms, starting with the ban on anti-personnel mines.

The organisation has successfully intervened in the Philippines, Myanmar, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi and India to convince armed groups that land mines pose a serious threat to future generations, because the mines remain ”alive” for up to 80 years.

The insurgent groups see anti-personnel land mines, usually manufactured in remote mountainous areas of Colombia, and other explosives as their most ”cost-effective” weapons. According to the armed forces, the cheapest mines cost just two dollars, and between 60 and 70 percent of mine victims in Colombia are members of the military and police.

Vice-President Francisco Santos said at the Jun. 4 congressional forum on land mines that in 2003, ”around 200 civilians, 460 members of the military, and three members of outlawed groups suffered land mine accidents,” while so far in 2004 ”we have information on 76 civilian and 91 military” victims of land mines.

Mines are the cause of 38 percent of injuries and deaths among military personnel, a spokesman from the Bolivarian Movement, the FARC’s political wing, told IPS.

The source, who preferred to remain anonymous, added that the use of explosives is one of the rebel group’s strategic military advantages over the armed forces.

Around one million dollars a year of the Colombian budget are allocated to the National Action Plan Against Anti-Personnel Mines, designed by Santos’s office in compliance with the Ottawa Convention which bans anti-personnel mines.

The government budget earmarks between four and seven percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defence spending and security, according to different sources.

The local magazine Semana reported that the Uribe administration ”is urgently seeking international aid to begin the humanitarian de-mining effort, to remove the mines laid by the insurgent groups.”

In his speech during the forum on land mines in the Senate, Galán said the right-wing paramilitary groups, which the United Nations holds responsible for at least 80 percent of all human rights abuses against civilians – such as mass killings of peasant farmers – in Colombia, is ”a state force carrying out illegal repression”.

He pointed out that the leaders of AUC, the paramilitary umbrella group, themselves admit that the militias were created by the state.

As part of peace talks with AUC, the government began last month to concentrate most of the paramilitary group’s leaders in a 368-sq km area guarded by the army in northern Colombia, providing them with guarantees that they will face no legal action if they declare a ceasefire.

But the United States has requested the extradition of many of those covered by the agreement, who are wanted in that country on drug trafficking charges.

In the meantime, Mexico offered to monitor possible future peace talks between the ELN and the Colombian government.

Galán said he met with Mexican Ambassador Mario Chacón, and that they agreed to explore the possibility of peace talks with the Uribe administration, monitored by Mexico.

”Mexico has offered us its house,” and according to the agreement with Chacón, ”the doors are open for developing an agenda” for peace talks, said the insurgent.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry reported that Mexico, which served as a guarantor of the talks that led to peace deals in El Salvador (1992) and Guatemala (1996), is setting up a commission to help support possible negotiations.

A political agreement reached last August by the leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – the main rebel group – and the ELN described Uribe as an ”enemy of peace” and a ”warmonger”, and stated that peace talks are impossible as long as the president continues to apply his ”hard hand” approach to the civil war.

However, the two groups agreed to work together to push for ”an exchange of prisoners of war and political detainees held by both sides” – a reference to between 300 and 500 imprisoned guerrillas and 21 high-profile hostages like Betancourt and 37 military and police officers held by the insurgents.

If the Uribe administration accepts Galán’s peace proposal, and the powerful 30,000-member FARC ratifies the political agreement signed in August with the ELN leadership, Betancourt – whose FARC captors are holding her as a hostage to be exchanged for imprisoned rebels in a possible swap – could be freed.

Betancourt has dual French and Colombian citizenship. French President Jacques Chirac recently told Uribe that he would support a humanitarian swap.

Among the hostages that FARC seized with the aim of exchanging them for imprisoned rebels are three U.S. defence contractors who were captured in February 2003 while on an intelligence mission as part of Plan Colombia, a U.S.-financed anti-drug and counterinsurgency strategy.