Colombia Says Contact Made With Rebels

On the eve of his second trip to the White House, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is for the first time making overtures to this country’s largest rebel group.

Elected nearly a year ago on a hard-line platform to fight the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials as the FARC, Uribe revealed last week that his government had been in written contact with a faction of the 17,000-member group.

Though peace negotiations still seem a distant possibility, some analysts believe there now may be a better chance for a humanitarian accord that would release kidnapping victims in exchange for jailed guerrillas.

This is the first time that the Uribe administration has acknowledged contact with the rebel group, which the president pledged during his campaign to defeat through military force. A peace accord with the FARC was the failed goal of former President Andres Pastrana, and there have been no formal peace talks since the former president retook a demilitarized zone ceded to the FARC in February 2002.

“There is a [FARC] sector that is more inclined to violence and terrorism, and another sector more inclined to a political solution,” Uribe said in an interview Thursday with Caracol Radio.

The statement prompted an outcry from FARC leader Manuel Marulanda, known by the nickname “Sure Shot,” who demanded the names and titles of the government officials who allegedly had been communicating privately with FARC members.

In a statement posted on the FARC’s Web site, Marulanda denied that any such discussions had taken place.

“I guarantee that nobody in this organization has had interviews or exchanges in private with functionaries of this government about peace negotiations,” Marulanda said.

Uribe’s statement seemed designed to exploit any split in the FARC, which has been battling the state and right-wing paramilitary forces in a bloody 40-year civil war. But it is unclear how big a faction of the FARC that Uribe’s government might have been speaking with.

The first public exchange about peace talks between the president and the FARC began with a March letter written by Marulanda to the head of the Colombian military. The FARC leader requested direct talks about a peace process between military combatants and was met with silence.

Marulanda sent a second letter that demanded another demilitarized zone similar to the one handed to the rebels for peace talks by Pastrana. That letter focused on a prisoner exchange and asked that the government appoint a new raft of negotiators for such a swap.

This month marks the first anniversary in captivity of 12 council members from the western city of Cali and the abduction of Antioquia Gov. Guillermo Gaviria Correa and his peace advisor, Gilberto Echeverri Mejia, all taken hostage by the FARC.

The rebels want to trade about 20 high-profile prisoners -- and three U.S. Defense Department contractors taken captive after their plane crashed in February -- for guerrillas held in Colombian jails. There are almost 3,000 kidnapping victims in Colombia today, most of them abducted by the FARC.

Under mounting political pressure from the families of those kidnapped, including the family of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, Uribe has said that he would pursue a humanitarian accord separate from peace talks. But he has said that all prisoners must be released and that the guerrillas should be deported to a friendly country, such as France, rather than returned to the FARC’s columns. France has yet to agree to such a proposal.

This month, however, Uribe announced he would not “cede a millimeter of national territory” for a prisoner exchange.

“There will never be a demilitarized area in Colombia so that this throng of bandits can carry out abuses in this country,” Uribe vowed while inaugurating a mobile army brigade in the city of Villavicencio on April 15, puzzling observers who had heard him say he was “ready to negotiate in five minutes” just days earlier.

Leon Valencia, a former member of the smaller leftist National Liberation Army turned political analyst, said Uribe was showing his true colors by calling the FARC a “throng of bandits.” But, said Valencia, pressure from governors and the families of kidnapping victims on the anniversary of their abduction has forced him to soften his stance.

“In his heart, he doesn’t want a humanitarian accord,” Valencia argued. “There is great pressure.... It puts him against the wall.”

Valencia said that ultimately Uribe would be “forced” to accept a prisoner exchange and that he is just biding time, hoping to further weaken the FARC militarily.

“The FARC is going to try to kidnap more people with higher profiles,” he added, contending that an exchange is inevitable.

What are not so predictable are peace negotiations, although Valencia said a humanitarian accord could “generate relationships” that could lead to a thawing of relations.

In the first possible signs of warming, Uribe sent this message to the country last week on the anniversary of the kidnapping of the governor of Antioquia: “We have authorized national officials and foreign governments to use their good offices to collaborate in a humanitarian agreement that can be formalized through the United Nations.”

He added that these representatives would be able to negotiate with “total independence.”

Uribe further revealed for the first time, “The government has had written contact with a sector of the FARC, and we will insist” on a humanitarian accord. According to family members, Uribe named his peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, as the point man for a prisoner exchange deal.

The war of words has been tough on the families of those kidnapped.

“The president hasn’t shut the doors,” said Yolanda Pinto de Gaviria, the wife of the kidnapped governor of Antioquia and an activist for the other kidnapping victims.

Though she believes that the rhetoric levels need to be “urgently” toned down -- a reference to Uribe’s harsh anti-FARC speech -- Pinto said she doesn’t believe it will dim the prospects of her husband’s release.

“I have a lot of hope and optimism,” she said. The process is “slow, but it is moving forward.”