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The Colombian government is seeing good progress in its peace negotiations with leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), President Juan Manuel Santos said in comments printed in yesterday’s El Pais newspaper. |
“I can imagine that FARC representatives will one day sit in parliament as legislators,” he told the Spanish daily. “That is the goal of the peace process. The rebels lay down their weapons, but remain true to their ideals.”
Santos said he was against breaking off the talks, being conducted in Cuba, in the coming months to make time for Colombia’s next presidential elections.
“I don’t see any reason for that,” he said. “The negotiations are moving ahead well and we should make use of this dynamic.”
He said the two sides have agreed that the FARC needs to shut down its cocaine production.
“There will be an agreement, that the drug smuggling and production of cocaine in Colombia will have to disappear,” said Santos. “Just think about what that means. Colombia will practically disappear overnight from its role as the world’s biggest cocaine producer.”
Meanwhile FARC rebels have appealed for the immediate release of one of their leaders from prison in the US.
“This is an SOS to all organisations defending human rights in the world... to ask for the immediate release of Simon Trinidad,” the leader of the rebel delegation, Ivan Marquez, told reporters.
Trinidad, 63, whose real name is Juvenal Palmera, was extradited to the US on December 31, 2004, and sentenced to 60 years in prison for the abduction of three US citizens, who were held for four years by the FARC after their capture in Colombia.
The FARC has demanded Trinidad’s release since the start of the 14-month old peace talks here, which reconvened Saturday after a two-day break. “We urge the Colombian government to allow Simon, as an integral member of the FARC peace delegation, to participate with his peers in Havana,” Marquez said.
He also urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to make “a humanitarian visit” to Trinidad in prison.
Trinidad is serving his sentence at a federal “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado.
Marquez said his “isolation is total. He doesn’t have adequate medical care; they took away his glasses and cards for playing solitaire. At hearings he is always led in chained at the ankles and hands. He doesn’t have the right to a newspaper or a book,” Marquez said. The Colombian government delegation, led by former vice president Humberto de la Calle, had no comment upon arrival.