CNN
February 2, 2000
 
 
Colombia peace process moves to Scandinavia

                  BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Commanders of Colombia's main
                  Marxist rebel force have quietly left the country, under police escort, to
                  study economic development models in Scandinavia as part of a
                  newly-agreed plan to negotiate an end to their war against the state,
                  authorities said on Wednesday.

                  The surprise trip to Norway and Sweden was cloaked in secrecy until
                  Tuesday night when five leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
                  Colombia (FARC) were whisked through Bogota's airport and put aboard
                  an Iberia flight for Spain, government and state security sources said.

                  They said the rebels were led by senior FARC commander Raul Reyes.
                  They were to fly from Madrid to Oslo for an initial rendezvous with a team
                  of Colombian officials headed by Victor Ricardo, the government's chief
                  negotiator in year-old peace talks with the FARC.

                  Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez De Soto confirmed the unusual
                  foreign visit, saying government and rebel negotiators would meet for "about
                  10 days" in Oslo and Stockholm, capitals of countries he described as
                  having "a very high component of socialism in the best sense of the word."

                  Former Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Egeland, who helped
                  broker the 1993 Oslo accords that launched peace talks between Israel and
                  the Palestinians, was likely to participate in some of the meetings, diplomats
                  said.

                  Egeland was appointed the U.N. secretary-general's special adviser for
                  international assistance to Colombia in December.

                  The 17,000-strong FARC, the hemisphere's largest surviving 1960s-style
                  guerrilla group, is included on the U.S. State Department's watch list of
                  "terrorist" organizations.

                  Reyes, 51, is himself wanted in Colombia on murder, kidnapping and
                  terrorism charges. But arrest warrants pending against him have been
                  suspended for the duration of talks to end a convoluted civil conflict that has
                  taken more than 35,000 lives over the last decade.

                  Until now, most of the talks have taken place in a Switzerland-sized area of
                  Colombia's southern jungle, which the government has ceded to the FARC
                  since November 1998 as a confidence-building measure.

                  It was there last weekend, in an apparent breakthrough in the slow-moving
                  peace process, that government and FARC mediators announced they had
                  set a six-month deadline to discuss the first four items on a 12-point agenda
                  for negotiations.

                  In theory, if they stick to that schedule, a negotiated settlement of the
                  FARC's nearly four-decade-old war against the state could come within 18
                  months.

                  The decision to speed up the negotiating process came in the same week
                  that Colombian leader Andres Pastrana met President Bill Clinton in
                  Washington to discuss details of a proposed $1.6 billion emergency aid plan
                  to bolster his troubled country's fight against drug traffickers and the FARC
                  rebels who sometimes protect them.

                  About 80 percent of the aid, which must still be approved by the U.S.
                  Congress, is aimed at providing Colombia's army and security forces with
                  the military training, weapons and air power to push into two southern
                  provinces where FARC warlords have overseen a surge in the production of
                  coca -- the raw material for cocaine -- in recent years.

                  Formal peace negotiations, according to the schedule announced last
                  Saturday, are to begin with the FARC's call for sweeping changes in
                  Colombia's economic model.

                  Foreign Minister De Soto told reporters that was why the talks had moved
                  to Norway and Sweden, which both have a long tradition of far-reaching
                  social security systems and government programs to foster economic growth
                  and full employment.

                  "These are economic models which, within the current framework of
                  competitiveness and productivity, are important for a country like
                  Colombia," Fernandez said.

                  In a 10-point list dubbed its "minimum agenda for halting the war," the
                  FARC has demanded a surge in social spending, the nationalization of key
                  industries and a 10-year moratorium on foreign debt payments.

                    Copyright 2000 Reuters.