Posted on 02/20/2002 10:01:50 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Saying that leftist guerrillas had chosen terrorism over political reform, a bitter President Andres Pastrana announced the end of three years of peace talks on Wednesday night and ordered the military to retake a huge rebel-controlled zone in southern Colombia.
Wagging his finger at the camera during a nationally televised speech, Pastrana denounced the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for attacks, kidnappings and drug running even as it talked peace. The president said his patience -- and that of the Colombian people -- had run out.
The final straw, he said, came earlier Wednesday when FARC rebels commandeered a domestic airliner, forced it to land on a rural highway and kidnapped a Colombian senator on board.
"You have done nothing but make fun of the country," Pastrana said in a dramatic 25-minute speech. "For that reason, you will have to answer to Colombia and to the world for your arrogance and your lies. For that reason, I have taken the decision to discontinue the peace process with the FARC."
He said he would end, as of midnight, the FARC-controlled status of a 16,000-square-mile haven that his government had ceded to the guerrillas in 1998 in order to promote peace talks. "I have ordered our military forces to return to this zone," Pastrana said.
Critics have long tried to convince Pastrana that the FARC was toying with his government and was intent on building up its ranks. The president, however, insisted on pursing his peace agenda.
Wednesday's hijacking came just one month after Pastrana warned the FARC that time was running out on peace negotiations and that the rebels would have to produce concrete results toward ending Colombia's 38-year-old civil war. Otherwise, he said, he would pull the plug on the talks.
"Colombians say: `No more!' " Pastrana said in his Wednesday speech, in which he used video clips and black-and-white aerial photos to illustrate a range of recent FARC abuses. "No one believes that they want peace. Sadly, the FARC has defined itself. Between politics and terrorism, the FARC has opted for terrorism."
Wednesday's decision may have been inevitable. There has been almost no progress in the negotiations. Meanwhile, the 17,000-strong FARC has used its haven in southern Colombia to grow drug crops, run guns, stash kidnapping victims and launch new attacks.
Pastrana's four-year term ends in August, and both of the leading presidential candidates have hinted that they would call off the peace talks and cancel the rebel zone unless there was some kind of a breakthrough.
The president on Wednesday also withdrew the government's political recognition of the FARC, meaning that rebel leaders will now be subject to arrest by Colombian authorities.
FARC spokesman Raul Reyes said he knew nothing about Wednesday's hijacking. But officials called the attack dramatic proof of the FARC's determination to remain on the offensive in spite of the public's clamor for peaceful gestures.
The hostage taken in the attack, Sen. Jorge Gechem Turbay, heads the Colombian Senate's peace commission and is the cousin of Diego Turbay Cote, a legislator who was gunned down by FARC rebels in December 1999.
According to passengers on the hijacked flight, two men and two women armed with pistols overpowered the crew of an Aires Airlines twin-engine Dash-8 aircraft shortly after it took off from Neiva, 135 miles southwest of Bogota.
"Four subversives got on the plane and threatened us with firearms. They said that if we moved, they would kill us," passenger Huber Herrera told Caracol television of Bogota.
The plane was bound for Bogota, but the hijackers forced the pilots to land near the town of Hobo, on the edge of FARC-controlled territory in southern Colombia.
"There were 50 or 70 guerrillas waiting for us on the ground when we landed," an unidentified passenger said as he stood near the aircraft, which had come to a halt in the middle of the road, blocking traffic for miles around.
The guerrillas had cut down trees lining the narrow, two-lane road to allow the plane to land, authorities said. After grabbing the senator, the rebels released the other 25 passengers and crew members unharmed.
But Herrera said he was nearly hustled away by the rebels, who mistook him for Gechem.
"They put me in one of the cars, and I got very scared because I thought they would kidnap me. Then, one of the rebel commanders said that I wasn't the senator and gave the order to let me go," Herrera said.
As the rebels escaped with their hostage in four-wheel-drive vehicles, officials said, other guerrillas blew up a bridge and laid explosives to prevent Colombian soldiers from giving chase.
After the hijacking, Pastrana held an emergency meeting with Cabinet ministers and military commanders and reviewed an intelligence report on the FARC's activities within the rebel haven. At a follow-up meeting, Pastrana made his decision to cancel the talks -- a huge blow to a man who had staked his presidency on making peace with the rebels.
Wednesday's hijacking was the third blamed on the FARC in recent years.
In January 2001, a disgruntled FARC rebel seized a plane with 31 passengers and crew on a flight from guerrilla territory to Bogota. The hijacker was eventually disarmed and jailed. In September 2000, a FARC rebel hijacked an Aires flight from Neiva to Florencia and forced it to take him to the rebel sanctuary.
According to Caracol television, the same Aires aircraft was hijacked on Wednesday.
Gechem, 51, of the opposition Liberal Party, is one of five Colombian congressmen held hostage by the FARC. The guerrillas have said they want the government to exchange the captive lawmakers for jailed rebels.
FARC Rebel planned to assassinate Colombia Pres. Pastrana, says Venezuela Pres "Chavez 'Trusted' Him"-- BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A leftist rebel accused of plotting the assassination of Colombia's president said Thursday night that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ``trusted'' him completely. Diego Serna, a confessed member of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, stunned the nation when he appeared in a video next to Chavez - pulling out his chair, handing him a glass of water - during a state visit in May.
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