IPS-English POLITICS-COLOMBIA: Negotiations With FARC Cut Short Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:19:49 -0800 Charles Davis WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (IPS) - Columbian Senator Piedad Córdoba charged at a press conference here Wednesday that the government of Colombian President Álvarao Uribe has little interest in negotiating a settlement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist guerrilla group that is said to be holding around 750 people hostage. Córdoba, a leftist member of the Liberal Party and an outspoken critic of Uribe, had been working with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez since mid- August to negotiate a ”humanitarian exchange” of the hostages -- which include three U.S. citizens and former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt -- for roughly 500 FARC guerrillas that are currently imprisoned. Betancourt in particular has been the focus of major media attention in France, where she enjoys dual citizenship. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made her freedom one of his top foreign policy goals. But negotiations regarding a hostage-prisoner exchange were cut short by the Colombian government on Nov. 21, after Uribe accused Chavez of violating a personal agreement by speaking directly to the head of the Colombian military. Córdoba says she is disappointed with Uribe's decision. She came to Washington -- which is expected to give more than 678 million dollars in military and economic aid to Colombia next year -- in order to urge members of the U.S. Congress to push for a negotiated settlement. In an interview with IPS, she said she met with Congressmen Bill Delahunt and Jim McGovern, Democrats from Massachusetts, as well as New York Democratic Congressman Ed Meeks. Both Delahunt and McGovern signed a letter to the Colombian government earlier this year urging the Uribe administration to push for a negotiated settlement. According to Córdoba, Delahunt has offered to meet with Chavez and come to Colombia in order to push for a political solution. Córdoba's visit to Washington comes as a communiqué said to be from leaders of the FARC guerrillas announced the group would be releasing two female prisoners, Colombian politicians Consuelo González and Clara Rojas, as well as Rojas' young son, as a goodwill gesture for the efforts of Córdoba and Chavez to negotiate an exchange. ”This is a product of the work that [Chavez and I] have been involved in, and we knew that there was going to be a liberation of some of the hostages coming up,” Córdoba told IPS. ”We expect and hope that this is the beginning of a process,” she added. Joining in Córdoba's call for a greater U.S. role in the negotiation process is Jo Rosano, the mother of Marc Gonsalves, one of three U.S. military contractors being held by FARC guerrillas. In 2003, the three men were conducting drug surveillance for the U.S. Department of Defence when their plane crashed over the southern state of Caquenta, a FARC stronghold. Though encouraged by a ”proof of life” video released last month showing Gonsalves to be in good physical condition, Rosano said Wednesday that she is tired of what she views as inaction on the part of the Bush administration. ”Here I go, another Christmas without my son,” an emotional Rosano told reporters. She urged the U.S. government to release two FARC commanders currently in U.S. prison in exchange for the hostages. Gilean Sanchez, a Colombia expert at the non-governmental organisation, Washington Office on Latin America, which along with the social justice group TransAfrica Forum co-sponsored a recent press conference with Córdoba and Rosano, said her organisation was trying to draw attention to a conflict that has received scant attention in the U.S. media. She told reporters that news that the FARC seemed set to release three of the hostages was a welcome sign that a politically negotiated settlement to the Colombian conflict could be possible. But she criticised the Colombian government for being hostile to the recent negotiations led by Chavez. ”The Colombian government did not do its utmost to really make sure that the [negotiating] process moved forward,” Sanchez said. ”And I think that they ended the process suddenly and too quickly, just when results were coming out.” Sanchez also criticised the U.S.-sponsored ”Plan Colombia,” a massive anti- drug interdiction program that she says has only exacerbated the conflict in Colombia, leading to internal displacement and human rights abuses on the part of both the FARC and Colombian security forces. ”The US has given more than 700 million dollars to Colombia every year for the past six years, and the majority of that money has been military aid,” she said. ”That has not resolved the conflict in Colombia.” ”The US-sponsored Plan Colombia has made it harder, certainly, just by intensifying the war,” agrees Adam Isaacson, an expert on Colombia at the Washington-based Centre for International Policy. Isaacson says the Bush administration has been unwilling to pressure President Uribe to be more open regarding negotiations because he is one of the few remaining close allies of the United States in South America. ”Both [Uribe and the FARC] are being very inflexible on this simple issue of a zone, the venue for these process negotiation talks to happen,” Isaacson told IPS. In addition to the release of prisoners, the FARC have demanded that a 500 square-kilometre demilitarised zone be created in order to hold negotiations on the release of the hostages. On Dec. 7 the Uribe government offered to create a zone of 150 kilometres, but FARC leaders soon rejected that as ”unacceptable”. Isaacson says the failure to agree on the size of the zone is one reason why Venezuela's role in recent negotiations was promising. ”The sad fact is that no previous effort had much progress at all, and the tiny amount of progress that they made in Venezuela was more than we had seen anywhere,” he said. On Wednesday the French government offered to grant asylum to any freed FARC guerrillas in exchange for the hostages. Colombia has typically been wary of outside involvement in its dispute with the FARC, but French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told reporters that President Uribe was open to the idea. French officials have also expressed support for continuing Chavez's role in mediating a hostage-prisoner exchange, though the Colombian government has been hesitant to do so. ***** + COLOMBIA: FARC to Release Three Hostages to Chávez (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40537) + COLOMBIA: Chávez Asks Uribe for Patience in Hostage Talks (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40141) + A Nation Torn - More IPS News on Colombia (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/colombia/index.asp) (END/IPS/LA/WD/HD/IP/CS/BO/CD/MJS/07) = 12202153 ORP016 NNNN