Slain Colombian Insurgent Held Secret Talks with U.S. Diplomats
 
Resent-Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:19:10 -0500 (CDT)


http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080304/index.htm

For Immediate Release:

March 4, 2008 Slain Colombian Insurgent Held Secret Talks with U.S.
Diplomats

Declassified State Department Memo Describes Clandestine 1998
Meetings with Colombian Guerrillas Central to Current Saber-Rattling
in Andean Region

For more information contact:

Michael Evans - 202/994-7029 mevans@gwu.edu

Washington, D.C., March 4, 2008 - A senior Colombian guerrilla
leader killed in Ecuador last weekend in a cross-border raid by
Colombian forces held secret talks with U.S. diplomats ten years
ago in Costa Rica, according to a declassified memorandum of
conversation published on the Web today by the National Security
Archive and cited in today's New York Times.

The slain insurgent, Razl Reyes, met secretly in Costa Rica in
December 1998 with a U.S. diplomatic mission led by Philip T.
Chicola, then director of the State Department's Office of Andean
Affairs. The meeting was particularly sensitive in that the guerrilla
group represented by Reyes, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), was listed on the State Department's list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations. The FARC remains Colombia's oldest and
largest rebel army.

Stressing "the absolute requirement for confidentiality," Chicola
told Reyes that the U.S. wanted to "to develop a channel of
communication" with the FARC:

I told the FARC representatives that while the [United States
government] had no preconceived agenda or structure as to how the
discussions might proceed, we wanted to use the meeting to describe
our views on counternarcotics, the peace process, the [kidnapping
of] New Tribes Missionaries (NTM), and the practice of kidnapping
and attacks on U.S. interests in Colombia. Beyond that, we were
open to discuss, or at least listen to, any topics the FARC wished
to raise.

Reyes replied by noting the "historic importance he attached to the
meeting," adding that "changing world and domestic circumstances"
had brought the parties to the table.

He praised President [Andris] Pastrana and his apparent commitment
to a successful peace process. He also reflected on the "illegitimacy
of the [Ernesto] Samper regime and its rampant corruption by
narcotraffickers. Reyes expressed satisfaction at the opportunity
to talk directly to the [United States government] and claimed that
information that reached US about the FARC via the press and other
sources was invariably untrue and distorted by anti-FARC interests.

Especially important for the U.S. was the 1993 kidnapping of three
New Tribes Missionaries in Panama by FARC guerrillas. Chicola told
the FARC emissaries that a "full accounting" of the missionary
kidnappings "would greatly facilitate" future exchanges with the
U.S. and that any future kidnappings or other attacks on U.S.
interests in Colombia "would definitely preclude" further U.S.-FARC
contact. The kidnapping and killing of three more Americans by FARC
forces later that year likely ended whatever channels had been
opened by the Costa Rica talks.

At the time, the U.S. was in the process of dramatically augmenting
its counternarcotics programs in Colombia, a goal that at times
seemed to clash with then-Colombian President Andris Pastrana's
commitment to reaching a comprehensive peace agreement with the
FARC, which derived a substantial amount of its income from the
drug trade. Chicola told the FARC representatives that "regardless
of this meeting or any other positive peace process developments"
that the U.S. would "continue its eradication and other counternarcotics
programs" in Colombia.

Reyes has for many years been the public face of the FARC in meetings
with foreign governments and other officials. His killing and the
military incursion into Ecuadorean territory that led to it have
touched off an intense round of saber-rattling in the Andean region.
Both Ecuador and Venezuela have expelled Colombian diplomats and
massed military forces on the Colombian border, with Ecuador having
severed diplomatic relations entirely. Colombian officials also
claim to have recovered Reyes' laptop computer, which they say
contains evidence that Venezuela has funneled some $300 million to
the FARC.

A second FARC representative at the 1998 meeting, Olga Marmn,
believed to be the daughter of FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, was
reportedly present and may have been wounded in the Colombian
military raid last weekend.

Read the Document January 8, 1999

Memorandum of Conversation Between USG Representatives and
Representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)

U.S. State Department cable, Secret, 9pp.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080304/19990108_chicola-reyes.pdf

Source: State Department Appeals Review Panel declassification
release under the Freedom of Information Act --

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