Colombia Rebels End Truce After a Government Attack
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Version 0 of 1. CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombia’s largest guerrilla group suspended a unilateral cease-fire on Friday, a day after an attack by government forces killed 26 rebel fighters, dealing the latest setback to peace talks aimed at ending more than 50 years of war. It has been a little more than a month since the talks between the government and the rebels, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, were rocked by a guerrilla attack that left 10 army soldiers and at least one rebel fighter dead. The government said that attack broke a commitment the rebels had made in December not to carry out offensive actions. The FARC blamed the government and said the episode had been provoked by military actions in the region. In response, President Juan Manuel Santos reversed an order to halt the aerial bombardment of FARC positions. The military action on Thursday occurred in Cauca, the same restive area in southwestern Colombia where the April episode occurred. It involved an aerial bombardment of a FARC encampment, followed by ground combat. Mr. Santos said the action targeted a guerrilla unit that had attacked a police station on a tourist island last year and killed a police officer. He said the unit was involved in drug trafficking, illegal mining and other activities that the FARC uses to finance its activities. “Now the guerrillas will be thinking about how to retaliate,” Mr. Santos said. “But it is just this spiral of violence, hatred, vengeance and retaliation that has led us to 50 years of war which we have to stop.” He urged the FARC to speed up the talks. In a communiqué, the FARC said it had suspended its unilateral cease-fire and put the blame on the “incoherence of the Santos government” after “five months of land and air offenses against our forces around the country.” Despite the heightened tensions, neither side said that it would walk away from the peace talks, which are taking place in Havana. Colombian officials and a senior State Department official in Washington said the talks had hit a roadblock on two crucial points. One is the FARC’s refusal to accept that its leaders should be punished with prison terms or house arrest. The other is the way in which the guerrillas would give up their weapons. The FARC wants to wait to do so until other elements of an agreement have been met, but it could take years to carry out some parts of a peace deal, such as pledges to invest in rural development or to give poor farmers legal titles to their land. Mr. Santos said earlier this week that he would send his foreign minister, María Ángela Holguín, to join the talks in an effort to accelerate the process. Also this week, a 7-year-old girl was killed by a land mine that government officials said had been planted by the FARC. That, too, occurred in the Cauca region. |