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| U.N. Considers Proposal to Mediate Colombian War |
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Posted by CN Staff on May 28, 2002 at 20:04:18 PT By Jason Webb Source: Reuters 
The United Nations on Tuesday said it was considering President-elect Alvaro Uribe's request for mediation in Colombia's 38-year-old war, but no one here expected peace talks with leftist rebels any time soon.The right-leaning Uribe won a landslide victory in Sunday's election promising a military build-up to target Marxist guerrillas, but, in a surprisingly conciliatory victory speech, he said his first task would be to seek U.N. mediation. However conditions being set for a return to peace talks by both the FARC rebels and Uribe are poles apart and a war which claims 3,500 lives a year shows no sign of cooling. The last attempt to negotiate peace with the country's largest insurgent army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, ended in February when outgoing President Andres Pastrana kicked the guerrillas out of talks in disgust after they hijacked a plane and kidnapped a senator. The United Nations said it would consider the request from Uribe, who says he wants to meet U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan before he takes over from Pastrana on August 7. "The United Nations has been supporting peace efforts in Colombia, and will examine with care and interest President-elect Alvaro Uribe's proposals regarding a future role for the organization in new peace efforts," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. The United Nations acted as a facilitator in the three frustrating years which Pastrana devoted to the peace process but did not perform the more demanding role of mediator between the government and rebels. It also played a key role in the resolution of Central American wars. For a brief period in January it seemed that U.N. special envoy James LeMoyne had pulled Colombia's negotiations back from the brink but the talks collapsed the following month. REBELS WANT CONTROL OF DRUG COUNTRY The FARC have declared that their condition for returning to the negotiating table is the concession of the Putumayo and Caqueta regions in southern Colombia as a safe haven. This is unlikely to happen. For one thing these are two of Colombia's biggest cocaine producing areas. Handing them over to rebels who make money from drugs and are classed as "terrorists" by Washington -- which supplies Colombia with massive anti-narcotics aid -- would be virtually impossible both politically and diplomatically. Uribe was also the most uncompromising critic of Pastrana's negotiations with the FARC that started after the government gave them control of a Switzerland-sized swathe of territory around Caqueta. Uribe said, and Pastrana later agreed, that the FARC used this land for training for war, running their drug business and imprisoning kidnap victims. Uribe, whose father was killed by the FARC in a botched kidnap attempt in the early 1980s, is demanding that the FARC cease hostilities and end "terrorism" before fresh talks can begin. Pastrana never managed this even when he had the rebels at the negotiating table. Analysts here say Uribe will probably first try to hit the FARC on the battle field to persuade them to talk. "The two sides are very far apart. The guerrillas have been very touchy about an active international presence in the peace process. Maybe we shouldn't be too optimistic about their agreeing to international mediation to restart a process in the near future," said Colombian defense analyst Alfredo Rangel. But Uribe's proposal, by casting him as a potential peace-maker, may itself provide a victory for the government-in-waiting. Human rights groups and some sectors in Washington have reservations about Uribe's plan to equip one million rural vigilantes with radios to provide information to the security forces. When governor of Antioquia Province in the mid-1990s, he distributed weapons to citizens' defense groups, many of whose members allegedly became far-right paramilitary outlaws. "The important part of the story is that Uribe has realized as soon as he is elected that Colombia's situation needs to be resolved by some sort of a peace process," said Arturo Valenzuela, an official in the administration of former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Source: Reuters Related Articles & Web Site: Colombia Drug War News Uribe Commits to War Against Drugs Colombian President-Elect Softens Tone on Rebels Colombia Elects A Hard-Liner on Fighting Rebels Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #2 posted by dddd on May 28, 2002 at 23:13:24 PT |
| ...I got the feeling that the U.N.,has become little more than a group of lapdog puppets,,that can be over-ruled by the bigdog governments,like the empire...Did anyone notice,,how the U.N. demanded to be allowed to send investigators into Jenin,and other cities where the Isrealis slaughtered civilians,,,but,they were not able to do so except on a very limited basis....The US didnt even pay its dues to the UN for several years...The US basicly ignores the UN on matters that are not favorable to the empire,and is quest to wage world war domination... The UN was pretty much shut out of the whole Afghanistan bombfest..("for security reasons")...The U.N. is in the pocket of the empire,and its' henchmen.....This story is just that,,a tall tale that was released to make it appear as if the new Uribe regime has made an effort to give the "narco-terrorists",and FARC to settle things peacefully,,,in other words,,if the rebels want to surrender,and be taken into custody,,then they can avoid ending up like the Afghanistan-Palestinian Bloodbath-o-rama,,where almost everyone who gets blown to bits by US made bombs,and guns,,was a "terrorist",or a "supporter of terrorists".,,and of course,,they will claim that their slaughter bomb party,was specially designed to minimize "collateral damage",,and there will be almost no civilian casualties reported.!....There will be more such "news",like in the above article.The world will be led to believe that they tried to deal with these rebels in a peaceful manner,,but that the terrorist rebels refused to comply....Then,,we will see stories of bombings by rebels where "innocent civilians" were killed,and the stage will be set for the latest bloodbath....It may be given some new name for the military offensive like,"Operation Children Saver",,,or "Operation End Narco-terror"........dddd [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by p4me on May 28, 2002 at 22:28:32 PT |
| ABC newsanchor Peter Jennings was on for the full hour of Charlie Rose tonight. He was mostly promoting a show that will be on ABC on Wednesday at 10PM about the pill industry. The show is called Bitter Medicine, Pills, Profits, and the public health Peter Jennings spent 15 minutes discussing the issues of the show. Revenues are up 90 billion over 6 years ago for the pill companies. VAAI,POW [ Post Comment ] |
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