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A Positive Development for Colombia......
New President of Colombia Meets Guerrilla Leaders
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
BOGOTA, Colombia -- President-elect Andres Pastrana met the top leaders of Colombia's largest guerrilla force in an unannounced session Thursday and came away pledging to remove security forces from five municipalities and to start peace talks with rebel leaders within 90 days of taking office.
In a brief press statement Thursday afternoon, Pastrana said that he had met the leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to deliver on his top campaign promise, a pledge to negotiate an end to nearly four decades of political violence in Colombia.
A brief videotape showed Pastrana shaking hands with leaders of the group, Manuel Marulanda and Jorge Briceno, at a location he described only as "somewhere in Colombia."
Pastrana became the first president to talk directly with the insurgent leaders.
Flying in a small plane under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Pastrana, wearing a yellow polo shirt, was flanked by the rebel leaders in camouflage uniforms.
He said they had raised some "worries" over a 10-point peace plan in his campaign platform, and expressed "political willingness" to hold a dialogue on "the national problem of reaching peace with social justice."
But he declined to answer questions on the discussions, saying the peace process would require "responsibility, seriousness and discretion" on the part of Colombians.
Though Pastrana had pledged to meet the rebel leaders soon after winning the election June 21, Thursday's meeting came as a complete surprise, and was carried out under extremely tight security.
In recent days Pastrana's transition team had told reporters the president-elect would be leaving for a few weeks' vacation in France, where his wife and children were waiting for him. Throughout the week, officials like Guillermo Fernandez de Soto, who Pastrana plans to name foreign minister, avoided returning phone calls, without explanation.
Industrial, ranching and business leaders, who are among those hardest hit by guerrilla extortion, greeted word of the meeting enthusiastically. "Pastrana is fulfilling his election promises boldly," said Jorge Visbal, head of the Ranchers Federation. "It's an important step forward which must be vigorously and enthusiastically consolidated."
One Colombian news magazine, Cambio 16, reported that the ranchers lost some $70 million to the rebels last year alone.
Jose Fernando Castro, omsbudsman in the outgoing government, called the meeting "a historic development without precedent," and said it "showed the will for peace of both the new government and the FARC." The rebel group is Latin America's oldest and most powerful, with intelligence estimates of its fighting capacity running from 10,000 to 15,000 combatants.
The agreement of the rebel group would be crucial to negotiating any lasting peace in this country of 36 million, which has lost more than 30,000 people to political violence since the 1960s.
Coincidentally, the second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army, has been preparing for talks in Germany next week with business and church leaders.
Not to be outdone, one government official, Environment Minister Eduardo Verano, told Colombian radio that two officials of the current government will meet with National Liberation Army leaders after they had finished preparatory talks with civic leaders. Leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia steadfastly refused to negotiate peace with the government of President Ernesto Samper, which it calls "illegitimate," and boosted Pastrana's standing days before the election by meeting with his campaign chief, Victor Ricardo.
In a strange, post-election turnaround, a German couple who had spent the last two years in a Medellin jail for paying a ransom to National Liberation Army rebels now appear to be the shepherds of the peace effort.
The couple, Werner and Isabel Mauss, had been accused by police of colluding with the rebels.
Mr. and Mrs. Mauss, however, said that they were on a mission to free a German executive's wife who had been kidnapped by the rebels, and that paying the ransom removed the largest obstacle to their country's hosting peace talks between the rebels and the Colombian government.
Friday, July 10, 1998
Copyright 1998 The New York Times
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