BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s government and its No.
2 rebel group announced Tuesday that they have been holding exploratory
peace talks, fueling hopes that the Andean nation’s two long-enduring
guerrilla conflicts could soon end.
The announcement came just
five days ahead of presidential elections in which not just President
Juan Manuel Santos’ political fate but also that of his 18-month-old
negotiations with Colombia’s main insurgency hang in the balance.
His opponents called the announcement a political ploy.
A
statement published on the presidency’s website said exploratory talks
with the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish initials ELN,
began in January. It says an agenda for formal talks would include
"victims and the participation of society. The other topics remain to be
agreed upon."
Santos told reporters that such talks will not commence until the ELN agrees to certain conditions, which
he did not enumerate.
Santos
reminded Colombians, however, that he had not agreed to open formal
talks with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, in
November 2012, until after it met conditions he demanded including
disarmament upon reaching a peace pact.
The rebels, known as the FARC, had earlier agreed to halt kidnappings as a revenue source. The ELN has
also abducted for ransom.
"We
are not going to put at risk, of course, the advances in Havana" with
Colombia’s main leftist rebel group, said Santos.
He did not explain
the announcement’s timing or take questions.
Santos said the FARC
talks in Cuba are in "their final phase" following Saturday’s
announcement that the parties had agreed on a framework for identifying
and indemnifying the conflict’s tens of thousands of victims.
The
parties had already reached framework agreements on agrarian reform and
rebel participation in politics and in dismantling the illegal drug
trade.
The initial Colombia-ELN were held in Ecuador, that
country’s president, Rafael Correa, told reporters on Tuesday, naming
the negotiators as Frank Pearl for the government and Antonio Garcia for
the rebels. The top diplomats of Ecuador, Ricardo Patino, and Brazil,
Celso Amorin, were involved in related talks in Cuba, said a senior
foreign ministry official in Quito who was not authorized to speak
publicly on the matter.
The joint statement does not mention a
timeline for further talks or say when or where they might be held. It
thanks Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Norway for "accompanying
and helping to guarantee this process."
Santos’ challenger in
Sunday’s runoff, Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, is the chosen candidate of
hard-line former President Alvaro Uribe and was the top vote-getter in a
field of five in the May 25 first round of voting. Santos has since
been endorsed by the main leftist candidate.
Zuluaga has been
cagey on whether he would continue the negotiations with the FARC,
though he has insisted the rebels halt all military activity. He and
Uribe allege that Santos would grant FARC leaders "impunity" as part of a
pact. Santos denies any such offer has been made.
In a debate on Monday night, Santos said to Zuluaga: "You want to continue this war. I want to end
it."
Both men served in Uribe’s Cabinet, Zuluaga as finance minister, Santos as defense minister.
Uribe
considers Santos’ opening of peace talks with the FARC a personal
betrayal. Recently elected to the Senate, he remains immensely popular
for weakening the FARC with close U.S. military and intelligence
assistance.
A former interior minister, Horacio Serpa, predicted
Tuesday’s announcement would thrust Santos to victory in what has been
an extremely tight race. "Santos had an ace up his sleeve," said Serpa.
Zuluaga’s
campaign manager, Marta Lucia Ramirez, called Tuesday’s announcement
pure politics, "an attempt to manipulate the anxiety we Colombians have
about peace."
Santos said in Monday’s debate that the FARC talks
may be Colombia’s last chance for a negotiated peace with the Western
Hemisphere’s main rebel band. Three previous efforts beginning in the
1980s had failed.
Both rebel armies have been battling the government for a half-century.
The Cuban-inspired ELN has about 2,000 combatants, compared to some 8,000 for the FARC.
The
ELN has a long history of kidnapping foreigners for ransom, of
extorting businesses and of sabotaging Colombia’s main oil pipeline
It
launched its insurgency in 1965, a year after the FARC. While the
FARC’s founding commanders are dead, one of the ELN’s founders, Nicolas
Rodriguez, is now its top leader.
___
Associated Press
writers Cesar Garcia in Bogota and Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador,
contributed to this report. Bajak reported from Lima, Peru.