Uruguay urges support for Colombia peace talks

AFP/Madrid

Uruguay’s president has urged the international community to do all it can to back the peace process between Colombia and leftist rebels amid fears that the talks could collapse, in an interview published yesterday in Spain.

The first peace negotiations in a decade between Colombia and the FARC began in Oslo in October and have since continued in the Cuban capital.

But in a fresh setback, Venezuela — a facilitator of talks between the rebels and the Colombian government — has recalled its representative to the peace talks in Havana in protest against a meeting Wednesday in Bogota between Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Capriles and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro are locked in a bitter dispute over the outcome of April 14 presidential elections to replace the late Hugo Chavez.

“We are at a crossroads: the most important thing happening in Latin America is the attempt to build peace in Colombia. It is one of the most important things that have happened in recent decades and we have to do everything to help,” Uruguayan President Jose Mujica told daily Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The leftist 78-year-old praised Santos as “an open man” who “should receive warm support from the international community”.

“There are many big obstacles because many years of war have created conflicting interests in a multitude of areas and obviously a lot of pain,” he added during the interview carried out last week while Mujica was on an official visit to Spain.

The peace talks are currently in recess and are set to resume on June 11. They are the fourth attempt since the 1980s to bring peace to Colombia, which has been at war since the rebels took up arms in 1964 in a peasant rebellion. The two sides announced on May 26 a deal on “land access and use” and the “regularisation of property” which was welcomed by the UN. But the negotiations are taking place without a ceasefire and they still face many obstacles, including whether the rebels can avoid jail before returning to civilian life, the FARC’s role in drug trafficking, disarmament and compensation for victims.

The government’s previous attempts at peace in the past 30 years have failed.

In 1984, the rivals managed to agree on a ceasefire, but it ended three years later after a wave of assassinations of elected officials close to the FARC.

Meanwhile Cuba expressed support for its ally Venezuela in a row with Colombia, which Havana suggested could hurt peace talks it has been hosting to end Colombia’s long war with leftist rebels.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez declared in a statement Cuba’s “unvarying position of solidarity with Venezuela and of recognition of the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro.”