Here is a good sign!
Colombian rebel group agrees to peace talks
BOGOTA, March 25 (Reuters) - A leading Colombian rebel group has agreed to hold preliminary peace talks with the government, authorities said on Wednesday.
Officials said the talks with the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN), set for June 5 to 7, would pave the way for an eventual "national convention" aimed at working out a peaceful settlement of the country's long-running guerrilla war.
The ELN, founded by radical Roman Catholic priests in 1966, is Colombia's second largest guerrilla army and specializes in kidnappings and economic sabotage, including frequent bomb attacks against one of the country's main oil pipelines.
It has long ruled out talks with the government of President Ernesto Samper, who is dismissed by ELN chieftains, headed by former Spanish priest Manuel Perez, as "illegitimate" because of charges that Samper used Cali cartel drug money to bankroll his 1994 election campaign.
But Jose Noe Rios, one of Samper's two specially appointed "peace commissioners," said the ELN agreed to hold preliminary talks after secretive negotiations in Madrid last February.
"We have reached a basis for compromise and understanding with the ELN that has allowed us to come up with this pre- accord," Noe Rios told Colombian radio.
The negotiations were held at the Spanish Foreign Ministry and a text of the agreement was published in Wednesday's editions of Bogota's El Tiempo newspaper after being leaked to the ABC daily in Madrid.
Noe Rios, who took part in the Madrid talks, conceded that the accord had not yet been ratified by the ELN's top leaders and was only signed by two little-known "international representatives" of the rebel group.
He said he was confident, however, it would receive the backing of Perez and other ELN commanders, and that the talks would go forward as scheduled in June.
The talks would come less than a week after Colombia's presidential elections on May 31. A second-round run-off will take place on June 21 if no candidate, as seems likely, wins by more than 50 percent in the first round.
Noe Rios said the two front-runners from the May 31 poll would be invited to join in the talks opening on June 5.
The talks would set the ground rules for a so-called "national convention," involving no more than 100 negotiators, who would seek to draft a lasting peace accord based, among other principles, on "full respect for human rights, social and economic justice, political democratization" and agreement on the future role of the armed forces in a country at peace.
16:10 03-25-98 |
