AFP/Washington
The United States is committed to the peace process being negotiated between the Colombian government and Farc guerrillas and will do everything in its power to help talks succeed, Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday.
His comments come a day after peace negotiators traded accusations over a clash that left 11 soldiers and two rebels dead last week.
“We’ve seen in recent days the effort to establish a lasting peace is not easy,” Kerry said during a speech at the state department.
“The US, we will do all that we can to help the Colombians achieve that peace.”
The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) have been in talks in Havana since November 2012 in a bid to end more than five decades of conflict that have killed more than 200,000 people.
Kerry said that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos had “placed high priority on negotiating a peaceful end to this conflict, and the US is fully supportive of this effort.”
Santos was booed on Monday for the second time in as many days by protesters who are against the peace process.
“Colombia is a country on the move, it has come an enormous distance in the last couple of decades,” Kerry said.
Peace, he added, “will unleash enormous potential for the Colombian people.”
Demonstrators in Medellin, where President Santos travelled to attend a meeting with business leaders, blew ‘vuvuzela’ horns and waved banners as they charged he was not showing enough support for the military.
On Sunday opponents of the peace process interrupted the president with shouts and the blowing of whistles at a tribute in Bogota to soldiers fallen in Latin America’s oldest armed conflict.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) insisted the army provoked the recent clash, which left 11 soldiers and two rebels dead, by laying siege to its fighters, and said the unilateral ceasefire they declared last December was still in force.
But the government’s chief negotiator at talks to end the five-decade conflict, Humberto de la Calle, said the Farc had violated their truce.
“The Farc broke their own word, their promise to declare and respect a unilateral ceasefire,” he told journalists in Havana, where the talks are being held.
However, he said the government was committed to continuing the peace process.
“Despite everything, despite what some people say, dialogue is the instrument that can end this war in the least painful, least drawn-out and above all the strongest and most lasting manner. Ending the war is more imperative now than ever,” he said.
The Farc’s chief negotiator, Ivan Marquez, echoed that call.
“We must keep going with these talks. They cannot be broken off for any reason,” he said.
But he insisted the nighttime clash in the western rebel bastion of Cauca was the army’s fault.
The Farc, which has pledged not to engage in hostilities except in self-defence, denies breaking its unilateral ceasefire.
“You have to understand that sometimes offensive actions are deployed in the course of legitimate self-defence,” Marquez said.
“We are maintaining the indefinite, unilateral ceasefire, as long as we are not subjected to a permanent siege by troops.”
The incident in Cauca is the worst crisis for the peace process since the Farc captured General Ruben Alzate in November, prompting President Santos to suspend talks until they released him two weeks later.
Secretary of State John Kerry
