Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez played role in Colombia's peace talks with Farc
The ailing former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, together with Venezuela's recently re-elected leader Hugo Chávez, played a critical role in bringing the Colombian government and the deadly Farc guerrilla group together for peace talks that could end one of Latin America's longest-running civil wars, the Observer has learned.
According to sources closely involved in the peace process, which sees historic talks opening in Oslo on Wednesday, the key breakthrough after almost four years of back-channel talks between the two sides came during a visit earlier this year by Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, to Cuba, where he met both Castro and Chávez, who was in Cuba being treated for cancer.
That meeting was the first of many in Havana between the two sides, facilitated primarily by Cuba and Norway with the backing of Venezuela, which saw agreement on the detailed agenda for the first round of talks this week. "Officially President Santos went to Cuba to discuss the Americas summit," said a source intimately involved in the peace negotiations. "But the purpose of that trip was to discuss the peace initiative."
The meetings earlier this year followed the decision last year by Santos to take the step of recognising that an "armed conflict" existed in his country, an initiative encouraged by Chávez since 2008. Those contacts also came in the same period that Farc announced it was ending kidnapping, one of five preconditions for talks that had been set down by Santos as a gesture of goodwill.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/13/fidel-castro-hugo-chavez-colombia-farc-talks
= new reply since forum marked as read
In addition to the parts cited by Judi Lynn, above, is this:
"According to sources closely involved in the peace process, which sees historic talks opening in Oslo on Wednesday, the key breakthrough after almost four years of back-channel talks between the two sides came during a visit earlier this year by Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, to Cuba, where he met both Castro and Chávez, who was in Cuba being treated for cancer." --from the OP (my emphasis)
I am wondering about the veracity of this ("almost four years of back-channel talks"
and the following (also from the OP):
"The disclosure of the key role of Cuba in organising support for the peace process marked the culmination of a long period of back-channel talks first initiated by Santos's predecessor as president, Alvaro Uribe, under whom Santos served as minister of defence." --from the OP (my emphasis)
Although it's impossible to tell what may be going on in "back-channels" in any conflict, the knowable news out of South America during Uribe's criminal reign in Colombia, which paralleled the criminal reign of the Bush Junta, here, revealed Uribe and the Bushwhacks actively sabotaging efforts toward peace of other LatAm leaders and of the FARC itself, the most dramatic example being the U.S./Colombia dropping 500 Lb. U.S. "smart bombs" on the FARC hostage and peace negotiation camp on Ecuador's border, in early 2008, murdering 25 sleeping people, including the FARC's Raul Reyes. Reyes was about to release hostage Ingrid Betancourt. Her family had been notified. French, Swiss and Spanish envoys were on their way to the camp to receive her, when they were told that everyone in the camp was going to be killed that night and to stay away. The U.S./Colombia blew the camp to smithereens and Uribe later claimed to have recovered Reyes laptop computer--the "miracle laptop"--which he alleged contained evidence that the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador were "terrorist lovers" and were helping the FARC obtain a "dirty bomb," among other wild accusations (all since entirely debunked). This bombing nearly started a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela.
So, if, indeed, Uribe had some peace feelers out to the FARC, he was likely being as treacherous, in that instance, as he had been when he lured Chavez into hostage negotiations, some months earlier, then had the Colombian military shoot at the hostages when they were in route to their freedom. Chavez had to withdraw from that effort--though hostages' families and numerous world leaders and groups were begging him to continue--because of the danger to the hostages (not from the FARC but from the Colombian military!). Uribe had publicly asked Chavez to undertake those negotiations (and there is evidence that none other than Donald Rumsfeld had a hand in the sabotage).
Subsequent to these events, Uribe and U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Bushwhack appointee, William Brownfield, staged a "rescue" of Betancourt from the "war room" in the U.S. embassy (where they watched a live feed of the operation). (Note: Very likely, the decimation of Reyes' camp on Ecuador's border had also been orchestrated from the U.S. embassy "war room."
It may be that Santos--whom Uribe hates--wants somehow to indirectly include Uribe in this peace effort, i.e., to give him a bit of the credit, for political and diplomatic purposes, or, alternatively, to tie Uribe in knots so that he will shut the fuck up on the need to kill every last FARC guerrilla fighter in the country and every peasant who ever handed them a drink of water. Uribe is a mad dog for war, just like his Bushwhack mentors. In any case, I don't believe that anything Uribe did was aimed peace.
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Two other items of interest in the OP:
"Others credited with having created the conditions for the talks in Norway are unnamed former participants in the Northern Ireland peace process." --from the OP
I remember arguing with rightwing DUers about Colombia's 70 year civil war, that the ONLY way to stop such a war is to STOP IT, cold. As with England/Ireland and Israel/Palestine, the accumulated grievances of a long civil war cannot be mitigated. It is too emotional. The only way to stop the killing is to stop the killing. They said that the FARC are criminals, murderers, kidnappers and drug dealers. Scum of the earth, kill them all! Well, in fact, the Colombian military and its closely tied paramilitary death squads have committed far, far more murders than the FARC have. According to Amnesty International, for instance, the Colombian military and its death squads are responsible for 92% of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia (about half and half). But even aside from carnage statistics, even if both sides were equally murderous, the bloodshed and other grief will continue, of its own momentum--it is a CYCLE of violence--if the momentum, the cycle, is not interrupted.
And I have to say that I'm VERY GLAD that, at LONG last, objective leaders are prevailing in a serious effort to stop this cycle of violence.
This, also, was interesting--that the Santos government wants to--or says it wants to--mentor the FARC into the political process and is seeing Ireland as the template.
"We want to see 'Timochenko' (FARC leader as of 2011) in Colombia's congress just as we have seen Gerry Adams in the Northern Ireland assembly." (--anon Colombia gov't source, from the OP)
This is the item on which the previous peace process in Colombia, twelve years ago, failed. When the FARC disarmed and entered the political process, thousands of them were gunned down by Colombia's rightwing death squads. The remnants picked up arms again and went back into the jungle. The peace process, which has to involve inclusion of the FARC in the political process, was deliberately sabotaged by the right, acting, of course, for war profiteers, land thieves, rightwing drug lords and transglobal corporations which had marked out Colombia as a venue for "free trade for the rich."
Now that FIVE MILLION peasant farmers have been brutally displaced from their lands, and the trade union movement has been decapitated (Uribe was targeting trade union leaders for death with his illegal spying program--with evidence that he was being assisted by the U.S. embassy (Brownfield again)--as well as spying on judges and prosecutors, for blackmail and threat purposes and to anticipate their moves against his criminal organization)--now that all this has been done (with at least $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid), the transglobal corporations want peace, in order to carve out their "free trade" zone in Colombia. And they also want to monopolize the trade in recreational, medicinal and/or addictive drugs through legalization. (Santos has come out for legalization.)
For all this, I STILL applaud the peace process, and, to give credit where credit is due, I applaud Santos, Obama and--probably key to it all--Bush Sr. operative*, CIA Director/Sec'y of Defense Leon Panetta (who yanked Uribe from the stage and vetted and approved Santos, back in 2010). No matter what else is happening or might happen, civil war is worse. And to end such a civil war as this, which has become endemic to the culture, takes miraculous diplomacy--diplomats worthy of a Noble Peace Prize.
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*(Member of Bush Sr.'s "Iraq Study Group," which I'm convinced is the entity that led the ousting of Rumsfeld, mostly over his intention to nuke Iran--circa 2006--also re Rumsfeld/Cheney outing of the CIA's entire WMD counter-proliferation project worldwide. The "old CIA" intervened. Another Panetta mission has been to monitor "the deal" that Obama made not to investigate or prosecute Bush Junta war crimes, which very probably included war crimes and other crimes including drug trafficking in Colombia.)
