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Uribe Resists Rebels' Demands to Withdraw From Strategic Locale

May 19 (Bloomberg) By Helen Murphy -- Hernando Herrera, a lieutenant colonel in Colombia's army, points a machine gun toward a ravine winding through the country's western mountain peaks to the sugar cane-growing towns of Pradera and Florida.

The rebels he hunts want free rein there for 45 days as part of a deal to free some hostages.

``From here, five bandits can dominate the mountain pass and pick us off with a single shot each,'' says Herrera, 40, leader of a battalion that patrols the 10,000-foot-high range. ``This is the route to everything they want,'' including a lucrative cocaine-smuggling corridor to the Pacific Ocean.

Since taking office in 2002, President Alvaro Uribe has bolstered Colombia's army to try to crush the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which the U.S., Canada and European Union consider a terrorist group. His crackdown has thinned the ranks of the FARC, as it's known by its Spanish initials, and curtailed kidnappings, another funding source.

Now Uribe, 55, faces growing domestic and international pressure for a deal to trade 500 jailed rebels for the most prominent 40 of the FARC's 750 or so hostages. The swap can only take place in a temporary demilitarized zone of about 818 square kilometers (316 square miles), the FARC insists. That area, once infested with guerrillas, is a hub of mountain passes that lead to Bogota, Medellin and Ecuador and the lowlands extending to the edge of Cali, Colombia's third-biggest city, Herrera says.

Uribe's Alternative

The Colombian government has rejected the idea, offering instead an unpopulated 150-square-kilometer area where the military doesn't operate. Most of the 110,000 residents of Pradera and Florida also oppose the FARC's demand, including Cristina Arias, who says guerrillas held her mother and father for ransom and killed her uncle in a bomb attack in Florida.

``If the FARC return, I will leave; I won't stay another minute under the command of those bastards,'' says Arias, 44. ``Here we have all suffered enough already.''

Lobbying for a deal intensified after six former hostages, released this year with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's help, reported that FARC captives were held in neck chains and are suffering from malnutrition and disease. The ex-hostages, all well-known politicians, have sought to mobilize public opinion for a deal.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, fulfilling a campaign pledge, has met with Chavez and Uribe in a bid to free Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen kidnapped while running for president in 2002. Her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, has called on Uribe to stop being ``pigheaded'' and make the swap.

The 1998 Experience

Uribe cites what happened in 1998, the last time the FARC got a free zone, for his refusal to meet a demand for territory. The group dragged out a 90-day agreement in southern Colombia into three years and used the area granted by then-President Andres Pastrana to re-arm, launch attacks and build up drug- trafficking operations, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, 56, said in an interview at his office in Bogota.

The government finally attacked the Switzerland-sized area in 2002, when aerial photographs revealed training facilities, a prison and more than 25 airstrips for shipping cocaine.

``It was the most devastating process for Colombia and they took total advantage,'' says Santos, who served as finance minister under Pastrana.

The military says that if troops pulled out of the two towns, the guerrillas would dig in and fight for the area, which has an international airport, two hydro-electric plants and provides water to Cali, a city of 2.3 million people a 50-minute car ride from Florida.

`Impossible to Manage'

``Even for the 45 days they ask for it would be impossible to manage,'' says Brigadier General Jaime Esguerra, commander of the Third Brigade, tracing his finger over military maps of the area at his Cali office. ``It took years for us to push them back as far as we have.''

Florida and Pradera endured mortar attacks, bank raids, kidnappings and murders almost daily before Uribe's offensive began in 2002. The surrounding slopes are potted with anti- personnel mines after serving for decades as a base for the FARC, the M-19 guerrillas and paramilitary groups.

Based on documents on FARC computers seized in March during a raid on a camp in Ecuador, Colombian officials say they believe the rebels have no intention of carrying out the swap, which was agreed to in principle years ago.

``From what you read in those computers, you can verify what we suspected all along,'' Santos says. ``There's no good faith in this process on their part. They just want to retake the area.''

Manipulating Opinion

Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo, who escaped in 2007 after six years as a FARC hostage, says a rebel commander showed him a 2006 memo that discussed ways to ``confuse international opinion'' by keeping hopes for a hostage swap alive.

The document, called ``Circular 8,'' said the humanitarian exchange proposal is a ``political tool,'' Araujo said in an interview at his office. ``I believe they've made an impossible demand to create a permanent objection so they don't have to do it.''

Santos says the rebels undermined previous negotiations with a car bombing that injured 23 people at a military college in Bogota in October 2006, a month after Uribe agreed to hostage talks. Guerrilla leaders viewed the attack as a success because it raised suspicions that the government itself carried out the bombing to scuttle a deal, Santos says, citing the captured FARC documents.

The FARC's immediate goal is winning recognition from countries other than Venezuela as a belligerent, rather than terrorist, force under international law, says Luis Eladio Perez, a former senator the FARC held for seven years before Chavez helped free him on Feb. 27. Perez is working on an alternative plan to the demilitarized zone with Sarkozy, Uribe and Chavez.

``If there is something I learned from all my years with the FARC, it's that they are thinking more politically now,'' Perez, who spent five years shoeless and chained to a tree, said in an interview. ``They didn't free us for any humanitarian reason, they freed us because it looked good.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Helen Murphy in Bogota at Hmurphy1 at bloomberg.net.
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Keep 'em on the run!!!

By Medellin Traveler on May 19, 2008, 12:41 in Politics & the war.

Atrevido says on May 19, 2008, 13:07:

Helen missed a detail. The report describes Colombia´s central mountain range the Cordillera Central not the western range the Cordillera Occidental. I knew a girl in 2001 who lived in Florida. She said the FARC were everywhere there and made life really miserable for the residents.

One thing I´m not clear on though is how being in control of Florida and Pradera would provide them with a protected route to the Pacific. They´d have to cross the Western Cordillera to get to the Pacific and to do that cross the wide valley where Cali lies. The whole valley from Cartago say down to Popayan is pretty well protected and patrolled these days by army and police. So where would they cross the valley? From what I´ve read elsewhere the despeje would give them a convenient route to move troops, drugs and supplies from Cauca up to Tolima, all in the Codillera Central.

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billyb says on May 19, 2008, 13:11:

She said "western mountain peaks", so i think she meant them being genericaly in the western part of the country and not the cordillera occidental specifically. They would not come down to the valley per say, but follow the mountain passes of la central, north, where they would come down by the canyon the las garrapatas and canyon de la Llorona and cut across El choco, either to the Pacific, or up El Atrato to the Caribbean coast.

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Atrevido says on May 19, 2008, 13:20:

Yes the cañon de las garrapatas is well conected to routes to the Pacific through Choco but I think it´s been under the control of Los Machos or Los Rastrojos (hard to keep them all straight).

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lampltr says on May 19, 2008, 13:23:

Sorry Atrevido, this valley in Cartago is not controlled by the military and police, where did you get that info from? Best to do your homework....I also ask you why roadblocks are pulled just before dusk in that region also, a little more research and physical knowledge is needed on your part before posting jeje, chao!

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billyb says on May 19, 2008, 13:27:

They were fighting for control over the canyon, but I think both of them are losing many men, so the FARC might consider moving in there if the army doesn't consolidate its gains quick. Just yesterday they captured Gildardo Rodríguez Herrera, alias 'el señor de la camisa roja', who was one of the men jockeying to take over for "Don Diego".

http://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/2008-05-19/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR...

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tejasmarcos says on May 19, 2008, 13:56:

interesting post.

trying to walk a straight line on sour mash and cheap wine...

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Atrevido says on May 19, 2008, 14:55:

No need to apologise lampltr. I´m gratefull for your encouragement. No doubt the FARC troop through Cartago after dusk and everyone here abouts is surely gratefull for the heads up.

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Mr. Hollywood says on May 19, 2008, 15:30:

I think at this point in the game PBH has a better chance of demanding and receiving its own autonomous zone in Colombia than the FARC.

Ms. Murphy missed another important reason why the FARC are wanting their own zone. It's obvious from recent events that many of the fronts are literally on their last legs and that the FARC leadership is fragmented and has trouble with command and control. A "zona de depeje" would give them a refuge from which to regroup and reorganize.

I can't imagine a single good reason to give it to them. If they wanted to release the hostages they've already shown that it's possible without a zona de despeje.

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slguy says on May 19, 2008, 15:45:

"Bloomberg = yankee propaganda"

ok, cassini, here's your chance to show us what you got besides cutnpaste and juvenile insults...

why don't you give us a factual analysis, in your own words, explaining exactly what qualifies this story as propaganda?

i'm betting it's WAY out of your league.

Before you throw me out, make sure I pay my bar tab

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Morrongo says on May 19, 2008, 17:41:

''Bloomberg = yankee propaganda
Yes there are lots of propaganda from lots of news media,sometimes it is difficult to find neutral pieces that one can gleam the facts.
I have been a long time admirer of your persistence with your own propaganda machine.I am presuming you are still at college,from your views and comments to others,hell i can remember those days too, when we were going to change the world with an ideology,but we normally grow out of such blinked views when puberty kicks in.

I have also been an admirer of your cut'n'paste work, hopefully that lesson in school has now been learnt and you are going to move onto perhaps a few ideas of your own.
sorry Slguy.... your post beat mine....my thoughts excactly..only you managed to write them in fewer words

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slguy says on May 19, 2008, 17:45:

apology? for what? ;)

Before you throw me out, make sure I pay my bar tab

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poco says on May 19, 2008, 19:53:

Lampltr Quote: Sorry Atrevido, this valley in Cartago is not controlled by the military and police, where did you get that info from? Best to do your homework....I also ask you why roadblocks are pulled just before dusk in that region also, a little more research and physical knowledge is needed on your part before posting jeje, chao!
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Hi Lampltr:
Before pegging you as a PBH nut case,,, with the distinct possibility of suffering from ambulatory brain death,, I'd like to know one thing,,, are you joking with this statement? In particular,, the suggestion that Atrevido needs more research and knowledge ?

"When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy." Quote - General Tommy Franks

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ColombianoGringo says on May 19, 2008, 19:56:

I sure hope they didn't use the real name of the lady in Florida that they interviewed for this.

This article isn't very well written and I find it pretty funny that they used a quote from Luis Eladio Perez, the new farc mouthpiece.

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b bruce says on May 20, 2008, 11:44:

If I were the FARC, I would have Uncle Hugo donate money to either the Billary or Obama movement on behalf of the FARC. Perhaps for enough money, they would start pointing fingers at Uribe as the road block toward peace in Colombia. In all seriousness, Uribe will not and should not give in to any demands by these murderous thugs. He and the Colombian military has them on the run and very disorganized. I just pray Hugo Chavez in an attempt to keep the Farc from dissolving, gets caught openly supporting them!

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