Havana – Peace talks between Colombia and its second-largest rebel group begin Friday in Cuba with help from Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and facilitators from Spain, Norway and Switzerland.
Attempts at peace have formed and fizzled before, but Antonio Garcia, the military commander of the National Liberation Army, promised his rebel group won’t give up easily.
“We are not going to run,” Garcia told reporters. “If the obstacles are big, we’ll have to look for support in society, support in the international community. We’ll have to reflect deeply on the obstacles, and work hard to overcome them … to clear the way to peace.” Several attempts at talks between the Colombian government and the ELN have failed since 1998. Earlier this year, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe accused Garcia of frustrating peace efforts.
When Cuba last hosted Colombia’s talks with the rebel group, in 2002, then-President Andres Pastrana pulled out, saying the rebels were not interested in peace. Friday’s talks mark the Uribe administration’s first formal negotiations with insurgents.
Garcia urged patience this time, warning the National Liberation Army’s 41-year war against the Colombian state would not end overnight.
“Peace is not a moment, it’s not an act,” Garcia said. “It’s a process, it’s the construction of a stage.” Also attending the talks are Francisco Galan, a captured rebel commander who was temporarily released from prison by Uribe in September in hopes he would help nudge his group toward peace, and Ramiro Vargas, a National Liberation Army member who lives in Cuba.
Cuba has served as a safe zone for Garcia, who has spent his days at an outlying Havana hotel with little visible security.
Usually the rebel commander hides out deep in Colombia’s mountains and jungles, alternately fighting and running from Uribe’s military. Showing his face back home could mean immediate arrest, or death in combat.
Colombian authorities said they don’t know how Garcia traveled to Cuba. Galan was escorted by prison officials and flew to Havana along with independent facilitators on a plane chartered by the Colombian government.
Colombian peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo and the Colombian ambassador to Cuba, Julio Londono, – who is also a former Colombian foreign minister – were representing Uribe’s administration in the talks.
Some of the meetings, which could last 10 days, were to be held inside El Laguito, a restricted government-operated district of lakes and rolling hills on Havana’s western outskirts.
Garcia Marquez, best known for his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” is an old friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro, and both men have tried to encourage Colombia’s guerillas and government to reach an accord.
The extent of the novelist’s participation beyond Friday’s opening event was not immediately clear, but even having his name associated with the effort makes a difference, the rebel commander said.
“When personalities with the stature of Gabriel Garcia Marquez show interest in the issue of peace it provokes more interest in the world,” Garcia said.
Colombian activists, politicians and university professors pushing for peace were also on hand in Havana to help in any way needed. They already credited more moderate attitudes by both rebel leaders and government officials for making this latest attempt at peace possible.
“We’ve got to take advantage of the fact their positions have changed,” said Daniel Garcia-Pena, a former peace commissioner in Havana who is an observer at the talks. “Colombians will not endure more frustrations.” Colombian Sen. Carlos Gaviria said he would be happy if the parties merely agreed to a date for the next meeting. But he and others said it’s critical to find a solution, with more than 3,000 Colombians killed every year in the conflict among Colombia’s government troops, leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary fighters.
The National Liberation Army and the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have been battling since 1964 to topple Colombia’s government and establish a Marxist-style state.
The 12,000-strong FARC has shunned peace talks.
The National Liberation Army, whose formation was inspired by the Cuban revolution, has seen its forces dwindle to fewer than 3,500 fighters under a three-year military offensive ordered by Uribe.
The Colombian president already has brokered a peace deal with the main paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. More than half the group’s 20,000 fighters have demobilized and the rest are expected to disarm in the coming months.
– Associated Press writers Margarita Martinez in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
