* FARC leader calls on Santos to help save peace process
* Santos says peace is saved through deals, not statements
By Jack Kimball
BOGOTA, Feb 23 (Reuters) – Colombia’s government will not
hold back militarily or with words in its offensive against
Marxist rebels, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Saturday,
after FARC guerrillas said his hostile attitude was threatening
peace negotiations.
Latin America’s longest-running insurgency has heated up in
recent weeks after a series of kidnappings and conflicts across
the country while government and rebel negotiators meet in Cuba
to try to reach a deal to end the five-decades-old war.
Both sides traded barbs this week, with Santos saying rebels
should compensate thousands of farmers who were forced to flee
their lands, and FARC leader Timochenko charging that Santos’
statements were hampering delicate talks in Havana.
“The gauge for the government is in Cuba. As we move forward
(with the peace process) we are satisfied. If we do not move
forward, we get up from the table,” Santos said in a weekly
address broadcast on local television.
“Here there is no truce of any kind, not militarily, not
judicial, not even verbal,” he said.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the
FARC, has repeatedly called for a bilateral ceasefire, which the
government flatly rejects. The FARC ended a two-month unilateral
ceasefire on Jan. 20.
Since then fighting has heated up, especially in southern
Colombia, where guerrillas maintain a strong presence, and which
is a key route for smuggling drugs.
The war of words is also simmering.
In a letter published on Friday, FARC leader Timochenko
called on Santos to help “save” the peace process.
“Peace is saved with concrete agreements, and not with
letters and pronouncements,” Santos retorted on Saturday.
Various peace efforts in Colombia since the 1980s have
brought mixed success, with some smaller armed groups
demobilizing. But the FARC, Latin America’s biggest rebel group,
has pressed on, funded in large part by drug trafficking.
The guerrillas were widely seen to have used previous
negotiations to re-arm and rebuild their ranks. Right-wing
elements linked to Colombia’s political establishment were also
accused of undermining talks.
Over the conflict’s long history, millions of Colombia’s
rural poor have been forced from their homes by FARC rebels and
right-wing paramilitary groups who later used the land to fund
their forces.
The FARC considers itself the representative of Colombian
peasants in their conflicts with big landlords and foreign
mining and oil companies.
Since coming to power in 2010, Santos’ government has pushed
through reforms such as the restitution of land to displaced
peasants. The move was seen as paving the way for peace talks
with the rebels, which began late last year.
“The Colombian state, the fundamental perpetrator of the
conflict, cannot pretend to be judge and jury in the processes
that seek to clarify truth and restitute victims,” the rebels
said in a statement in Cuba on Saturday.
The guerrilla group asked for a high-level commission made
up of FARC members, the national government, guilds and social
groups to investigate displacement in Colombia.
It also wanted “the guarantees necessary so that in
Colombia, in safe conditions, (the committee) can check and
verify the real situation of the properties that are said to
have been taken by us.”
(Additional reporting by Nelson Bocanegra in Bogota and Rosa
Tania Valdes in Havana; Editing by Vicki Allen)
