|
|
|
|
||
|
US PRESENCE GROWING IN COLOMBIA
(This article is from the October 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
Highlights of a Sept. 21 People's Voice interview with a representative of the International Commission of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP):
Question: What is the extent of US military and political presence in Colombia at the moment?
Reply: Colombia is a country that is dependent on and dominated by the economic and political designs of the United States. The U.S. has been increasing its military presence through the instalment of so-called military advisors and instructors of military battalions, financed by Plan Colombia. We estimate the number of these advisors at about one thousand, although they officially acknowledge only around 300, without taking into account all the members of foreign intelligence and security organizations that move around in Colombia as if in their own home.
Q: When will this increasing U.S. presence spark some kind of military confrontation?
Reply: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) have pointed out that Plan Colombia is a plan for war. When it begins to be implemented at the end of this month or the beginning of October, so too will begin the popular response to the aggression that it signifies, and this will increase the level of the war.
Q: What is the present status of the peace talks between the Pastrana government and FARC-EP?
Reply: The dialogue process, which is designed to find alternatives other than war to resolve the Colombian conflict, maintains its course amid ever-increasing difficulties caused by the obvious lack of will and political capacity on the part of the Colombian government to take it further. At this time, the Public Hearings are continuing to take place in the New Colombia, San Vicente del Caguan. Furthermore, still on the table at our request, is the proposal for a cease-fire and suspension of hostilities, which will soon be dealt with by the National Table of Dialogues.
Regardless of what is done by class enemies in respect to their policies for peace, the FARC-EP maintains without reservation, the will to contribute to the search for political solutions through dialogues to obtain peace with social justice, dignity, independence and sovereignty.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the situation in the liberated zones controlled by FARC-EP.
Reply: Because we are a guerrilla army, we continue with the tactic of absolute mobility, thus we don't control exactly defined zones. Our sixty fronts cover the entire national geography, and each of them has their zones of influence, areas in which we exercise state functions.
A different thing is the zone which was demilitarized for the dialogues, the focal centre of which is San Vicente del Caguan, which exists precisely to develop the process for building peace. This is the location of the National Table of Dialogues, and the Public Hearings, which have become a centre of discussion and debate in Colombia over how to construct the New Colombia.
Q: What are the key actions which can be taken by supporters of the peace process and opponents of U.S. intervention, in Canada and other countries?
Reply: The actions we request are those which will repudiate and denounce Plan Colombia as a plan of war, as a plan of U.S. intervention in the internal matters of our country. We also ask for support for the peace process being developed in the demilitarized zone. Any action that will result in increased awareness of these issues is important, whether projected through the press, radio, television, magazines, public assemblies, protest marches, rallies and conferences; or any other type of action with this purpose. Letters to this effect can be sent to the embassies of Colombia and the United States, and also to the Canadian government, with which we are prepared to talk in order to present our version, whether they visit us in the demilitarized zone, or receive us in Canada.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||
