November 26, 2007

Uribe Didn’t Want Prisoner Exchange Talks to Succeed

by Garry Leech

Last week, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe ended negotiations seeking an exchange of prisoners between his government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The end of the process came when Uribe effectively fired Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba from their roles as mediators. Uribe did everything he could to undermine the prisoner exchange talks since reluctantly initiating the process in August. His actions have made evident that he never intended to allow Chávez and Córdoba to succeed in their mission.

Following the deaths of the eleven departmental legislators in June, Uribe was under intense pressure to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the FARC for the remaining 45 high-profile prisoners held captive by the rebel group. On July 5, millions of Colombians took to the streets to demand a negotiated prisoner exchange while analysts debated about whether or not the eleven representatives had been killed in a botched rescue attempt. The following month, Uribe submitted to the public pressure being placed on him to negotiate the release of the captives and asked Córdoba and Chávez to act as mediators between the Colombian government and the FARC.

Chávez’s outspokenness and lack of discretion was already legendary, so Uribe knew full well that the process was going to become a media spectacle once he enlisted the Venezuelan president’s help. Therefore, while appeasing critics by initiating a high-profile negotiation process, Uribe knew that Chávez’s personality would undoubtedly provide him with a justification to terminate the process at a later date should talks begin showing signs of progress. In all likelihood, Uribe probably doubted that even the leftist Chávez would make any headway in talks with Colombia’s largest guerrilla group.

The Colombian right quickly began criticizing Uribe for providing Chávez with a platform to increase his visibility and legitimacy among Colombians. Uribe responded to pressure by his own supporters by attempting to sabotage the negotiations. He made unilateral declarations that illustrated his unwillingness to allow any serious talks to even get off the ground. For example, when Córdoba visited the two FARC guerrillas—Simón Trinidad and Soñia—imprisoned in the United States, to determine their role in any potential prisoner swap, Uribe immediately declared that his government would not allow them to be included in any exchange rather than allowing negotiators to later address their particular cases.

Uribe also made it clear that he was going to do everything possible to ensure that Chávez and FARC negotiators couldn’t meet face to face. The Colombian president refused to guarantee safe passage to FARC leaders so they could meet with Chávez in Venezuela—something he has provided to ELN negotiators who have traveled to both Cuba and Venezuela. When it was initially rumored that the FARC’s second-in-command, Raúl Reyes, would travel to Caracas to meet with Chávez, Uribe make it clear that the guerrilla leader would have to find his own way to Venezuela and that he would be arrested by Colombia’s security forces if they were to encounter him. When Chávez then said that he would be willing to travel to the jungles of Colombia to meet with the FARC’s supreme commander Manuel Marulanda, Uribe immediately ruled out any such meeting on Colombian soil.

The Venezuelan president then suggested that Marulanda come to Caracas to discuss a prisoner exchange, and perhaps even lay the foundation for future peace talks. Uribe again blocked a meeting between the two people best positioned to reach an agreement by announcing, “Manuel Marulanda sends messages that he can’t attend meetings because if he comes out of hiding he’ll be killed. Well, he guesses correctly.” The Colombian president then declared that the only people Marulanda “has to meet with are the judges and police, to respond for 40 years of killing and other crimes.”

These examples hardly represent the rhetoric and actions of someone committed to the successful negotiation of a prisoner exchange. Uribe’s obstinence represented the clearest evidence that Uribe was never serious about allowing the Venezuelan leader to successfully negotiate a prisoner exchange. After all, how could the two sides engage in serious discussions if they weren’t allowed to sit down together? Nevertheless, despite Uribe’s clumsy attempts to prevent Chávez and the FARC from meeting face-to-face, Ivan Marquez of the rebel group’s central command made it to Caracas and met with both the Venezuelan president and Córdoba.

Less than two weeks later, Uribe announced out of the blue that Chávez only had six more weeks to reach a prisoner exchange agreement—imposing a deadline of December 31. Chávez pointed out the irrationality of such impatience by noting that the mediation efforts of Córdoba and himself had shown more promise of success in three months than Colombia’s peace commissioner had achieved in the last five years.

But that promise of success was precisely the reason that Uribe imposed the unrealistic deadline on the talks—to ensure their failure. Several days later, the Colombian president used the fact that Córdoba had called Colombian army chief General Mario Montoya and handed the phone to Chávez—against the expressed wishes of the Colombian president—as grounds for terminating the process. While Córdoba and Chávez’s decision to contact Montoya might have been irresponsible, it hardly justified ending an important and promising negotiating process.

While some of the FARC’s demands also posed obstacles to reaching a successful exchange agreement, they never threatened to derail talks before the two sides even sat down to seriously negotiate. For example, the rebel group’s insistence on a demilitarized zone in which to conduct an actual exchange was a thorny issue that would have needed addressing during the negotiations. However, it was not a deal-breaker at this point in the process. And while the FARC’s slowness to provide proof of life evidence on the prisoners—the group promised to supply it by the end of the year—was disappointing, anyone who believed that the guerrillas were going to engage in a speedy negotiating process was being completely unrealistic.

Following his firing of Chávez, Uribe attacked the Venezuelan president’s motivations claiming, “Your words, your positions, suggest you are not interested in peace in Colombia, but rather in Colombia becoming the victim of a terrorist government of the FARC.” Uribe then used the same strategy he has repeatedly used against progressive sectors in Colombia, particularly human rights defenders, and accused Chávez of supporting terrorists. Despite the fact that Chávez never commented on the legitimacy of the FARC during negotiations and only met once with a leader from the rebel group, Uribe ludicrously declared, “We need a mediation with terrorists, and not people who try to lend legitimacy to terrorism.”

At the end of the day, Uribe never intended for the prisoner exchange talks to prove successful. He appeased his domestic critics by initiating high-profile talks that he most likely believed would never prove successful. And by asking Chávez to mediate the talks, he attempted to shift the responsibility for any failure to reach a prisoner exchange agreement away from himself and firmly onto the shoulders of the Venezuelan president.

In the meantime, if the process did happen to show any signs of success, Uribe was safe in the knowledge that Chávez’s renowned lack of diplomatic protocol would undoubtedly provide him with the necessary excuse for terminating the talks. After all, a successful prisoner exchange agreement would have reflected positively on both Chávez and the FARC and to a much lesser degree on Uribe, who had effectively consigned himself to the sidelines. Therefore, from the Colombian president’s perspective, the fact that the process was showing signs of promise, and that it might improve the FARC’s international standing, meant that it had to be terminated.

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