• by IPS Correspondents (bogota)
• Friday, December 30, 1994
• Inter Press Service

BOGOTA, Dic 30 (IPS) - A year's-end exchange of messages between the Colombian government and insurgent forces indicates that the two parts are interested in moving towards conversations in 1995.

High Peace Commissioner Carlos Hollmes Trujillo recently released a document that said now is a "favourable" moment for moving towards negotiations, and the communist Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) sent the government a Christmas card calling for talks to lead to a peace treaty.

Several times since Nov. 16, when President Ernesto Samper outlined his peace policy and set a "preparatory" period towards "fruitful dialogue", the rebel forces united under the National Guerrilla Coordinating Committee (CNG) have expressed their inclination towards dialogue.

With the statement "war breaks out; peace is built," Samper demonstrated the unhurried and deliberate stance his government - through the High Peace Commissioner - will take with respect to talks with the rebels.

United under the CNG umbrella are FARC with its 10,000 members, and the National Liberation Army (ELN) and a dissident sector of the legalised Popular Liberation Army (EPL) - which have a combined membership of 4,500.

According to official figures, in the January-June period 789 insurgents and 366 soldiers and police were killed in armed conflict, and the rebels attacked 27 towns and villages and bombed oil pipelines 40 times.

For the June-November period, army estimates indicate that 573 guerrillas were killed and 779 detained, 1,200 less than in the first part of the year. The overall proportion of two rebels killed per soldier remained steady.

Insurgent activity has let up slightly as 1995 approaches, but 10 people were killed when three buses were attacked on Dec. 22 in the northern port city of Cartagena.

Police attributed the action to the ELN, claiming the buses were burnt because of the owner's refusal to pay a "guerrilla toll tax." However, the attacks differ from others claimed by the ELN in which passengers' lives have been spared.

In any case, the attack would be included in what Hollmes Trujillo called in his recent message "momentary hurdles."

As a first "practical step" towards a solution to the conflict, Hollmes Trujillo called on the rebels to build a climate of trust, avoiding "the ethical repudiation produced by actions that affect the safety" of the civilian population.

With its relatively low profile and focus on what the government calls "discreet but not secret dialogues," Samper's peace policy differs from those followed by former Presidents Virgilio Barco (1986-90) and Cesar Gaviria (1990-94).

Samper and Hollmes Trujillo have made it clear that they do not aspire to a total ceasefire but to a "lowering of the intensity" of the conflict, in contrast with previous governments that set a ceasefire as a prerequisite for negotiations.

From 1990 to 1993 5,000 members of the April 19 Movement, the EPL, the Revolutionary Workers Party, the Quintin Lame and a dissident sector of the ELN - the Current of Socialist Renovation - turned over their arms and demobilised.

Today's is a new stage, and the recent exchange of messages provides a glimpse of the possibility of an understanding being reached between the powerful members of the CNG and the government.

However, the communication referred to the government-created rural safety cooperatives, regarded by the ELN and human rights defenders as training centres for paramilitary groups, accused of carrying out a dirty war in the 1980s.

The government defends the cooperatives as a rural safety measure and a means of fighting a wave of kidnappings that reached 1,500 in 1994, half of which were attributed to insurgent forces.

An external factor that analysts have pointed to as favourable for the possibility of future dialogue is Colombia's tightening of political and economic ties with Cuba.

Indicative of this phenomenon was an editorial in Colombia's most influential daily 'El Tiempo' - with a strong anti-communist tradition - which last week called for a political transition in Cuba with Fidel Castro - "intelligent and respected by his people" - still in power.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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