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.