COLOMBIA: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says "red lines" drawn in peace talks with FARC

Record ID: 349647

  • Title: COLOMBIA: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says "red lines" drawn in peace talks with FARC
  • Date: 20th October 2012
  • Summary: BOGOTA, COLOMBIA (OCTOBER 19, 2012) (REUTERS) GENERAL VIEW OF COLOMBIA PRESIDENT JUAN MANUEL SANTOS DURING A GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY FORUM IN BOGOTA VARIOUS OF FORUM ATTENDEES (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT JUAN MANUEL SANTOS SAYING: "We will see if these conversations produce results. We know perfectly well what we want and we know exactly where the red lines ar
  • Embargoed: 4th November 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Colombia
  • Country: Colombia
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAD2GT7G1JOWGDBSG0A63AHJ5TK
  • Story Text: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said he was hopeful of results from a peace negotiation that opened in Norway earlier this week between his government and FARC rebels.
    The Norway talks represent the first attempt in a decade to end half a century years of armed conflict. The talks will resume formally in Havana in mid-November.

    "We will see if these conversations produce results. We know perfectly well what we want and we know exactly where the lines are drawn, in what we can cede, in what we cannot cede. I hope that this leads to a result. It would be wonderful for everyone. But if it does not, we have done things so well and in such a way that it will not cost the country anything for having tried," Santos said.
    Earlier in the day, the Colombian president defended his signature law that returns land seized by illegal armed groups to peasants after leftist rebels assailed the measure at the start of peace talks.
    Elsewhere in the Colombian capital on Friday, former senator and peace activist Piedad Cordoba told a news conference that civil society organizations should also have a seat at the negotiating table.

    "We have made a presentation for a special humanitarian agreement that recognizes a very calamitous situation in the country, with the fact of forced disappearances, but it also has to do with another series of degrading humanitarian situations, and because of this we wanted to invite through this proposal the government and the insurgency and we hope to participate as part of a civil society that recognizes the inequities of different regions of the country," Cordoba said.
    Although Colombia's leftist guerrillas have said their priority in peace talks is land reform, over years of fighting, they have come to be associated more with their propensity for violence and kidnapping.
    Still, Cordoba believes the political stalemate may soon come to an end, at least with the Marxist group the National Liberation Army, or ELN.

    "We believe there already even may be a possible rapprochement between the national government and the national liberation army (ELN), that in the dynamics and the timeframe dictated by the national liberation army and the national government, surely very soon we are going to have news of what the participation means, and that will be supremely important to solidify this whole process for the national liberation army," she said.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register