Uribe and Chavez to Meet Friday
The Two Presidents Plan to Discuss the Plight of those in Captivity
This Friday, President Chavez of Venezuela and President Uribe of Colombia will meet to discuss a humanitarian exchange between the Colombian Government and the FARC.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will arrive in Bogota on Friday morning for a summit of less than 6 hours with his Colombian counterpart President Alvaro Uribe in an attempt to negotiate a humanitarian exchange of 45 prisoners - among them three US citizens and French Colombian Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt - between the Marxist FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas and the Colombian government.
The FARC, who have been waging a 4 decade war against the Colombian establishment and who hold anything up to an estimated 4000 prisoners, will likely maintain their strong stance on a desired demilitarised zone in the Valle de Cauca region in the South of the country for such an exchange, an issue upon which hard-line President Uribe has so far shown he is unwilling to cede any ground.
President Uribe who has won successive Presidential elections largely on the ticket of matching rebel stubbornness with military action will be looking to make sure that any deal is struck with his terms. He will not yield the region of Florida and Pradera to the FARC given what took place when Andres Pastrana’s government conceded 42,000 square km in San Vicente del Caguan in 1998 which the FARC purportedly used to strengthen their ranks, import arms and export cocaine.
It remains to be seen whether either side will emerge content from this meeting at the Presidential ranch El Hato Grande on the outskirts of the capital Bogota. While President Chavez received family members of those in captivity in Venezuela on August 20, a meeting masterminded by fierce critic of Uribe and open Chavista, Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, the relationship between the two ideologically opposite Presidents is less than amicable.
The porous nature of the border between the two countries has led to as yet unsubstantiated claims by the US Government that President Chavez openly supports the FARC rebels. Contrasting these claims the Venezuelan President famously cut off all diplomatic relations with Colombia in 2005 when it was revealed that FARC commander Rodrigo Granda was snatched in Venezuelan sovereign territory illegally by Colombian Special Forces.
In June of this year President Uribe released more than 150 FARC guerrillas, including Rodrigo Granda, in a gesture of “goodwill” that he hoped would provoke such a reaction from the other side. The FARC dismissed the act as little more as a smoke screen for the scandals surrounding the links between the government and the right-wing paramilitary groups.
FARC spokesperson Raul Reyes has vehemently dismissed any exchange until the demilitarised zone is agreed, at a time when even hardened Colombians appear increasingly weary of the endless conflict. The deaths of eleven congressmen from Cali in June produced widespread outrage and mobilized protest marches the length and breadth of the country. And the protests won’t go away. A teacher from a small town near the Ecuadorian border, Gustavo Moncayo, marched all the way to Bogota to keep the issue burning as his son has been held by the FARC for 10 years. Moncayo has made his home in the seat of Colombian power in the Plaza de Bolivar just a stone’s throw from the statue of the great liberator himself.
Colombians on the whole may feel optimistic about Friday’s meeting, but they know that no deals will be struck without the promise of the release of those FARC members extradited to and imprisoned in the United States such as Simon Trinidad and Sonia, a matter that promises to be more complicated than the first.
