Colombia starts talks to end armed conflict

Colombia’s government has its best chance yet of ending of civil war as negotiators sit down today in Oslo with a rebel group whose ranks have been thinned by a decade of military defeats.

President Juan Manuel Santos vows that the talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, will last months rather than years as the two sides look to end a conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives. 

Negotiators will hold a news conference in the Norwegian capital tomorrow.

Success is far from certain as victims of the civil war threaten to reject any government offers of amnesty while some guerrilla fighters resist the call to give up arms and rejoin peaceful society. 

Still, the two sides may be closer than ever following military setbacks for Farc that included the death of the movement’s leader last year.

“Both see the cost of continuing to fight as greater perhaps than the cost of negotiating a way out,” said Isacson, a Colombia specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America. 

If I had to bet, I’d say this is ultimately going to work, but I’m worried there are some really thorny things on the agenda.

Talks will cover six areas that include issues such as human rights, violence, drug trafficking and giving peasants more political power. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government, which the U.S. has accused of harboring Farc leaders, will send delegates to participate in the process along with Chile, whose billionaire President Sebastian Pinñera is an ally of Santos.

Colombia’s economy could see Asia-like growth of 6 percent to 7 percent “for decades” if the government strikes a peace deal that would open up farmland in rebel-held territory for development, Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas said in an interview last month.

Ecopetrol SA, Colombia’s largest oil company that has undertaken an $80 billion investment plan through 2.020, also stands to benefit as peace would reduce rebel attacks on its pipelines.

Previous peace talks failed in 2.002 after rebel strength surged following President Andrés Pastrana’s decision four years earlier to cede guerrillas a Switzerland sized demilitarized zone that critics saw as the staging ground for drug trafficking and military operations.

Colombia’s economy grew an average 4.5 percent over the past decade and will expand at a similar pace this year and next.

Former Interior Minister Humberto De La Calle will lead the government’s negotiating efforts.

“We sincerely think that conditions exist to achieve an effective and favorable result,” De La Calle said in a statement.

Santos, who continued predecessor Alvaro Uribe’s U.S. funded offensive against the guerrillas and last year oversaw the killing of their leader, Alfonso Cano, in september turned down the Farc’s request for a mutual cease-fire.

The proportion of Colombians with a favorable image of Santos rose to 63 percent last month, up 18 percentage points from August, according to a poll by Datexco Co. published in El Tiempo newspaper. 

The Sept. 24-26 telephone survey of 1,000 people, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, found that 67.4 percent approve of Santos’ handling of the peace process.

The army’s military assault has weakened the Farc, whose ranks have fallen by more than half to an estimated 8,000 over the past decade, according to the government. 

The guerrillas this year vowed to halt a decades-old tradition of kidnapping for ransom, eliminating a major source of funding.

While the group has been weakened, units of the Farc still are able to finance operations with drug money and remain well entrenched in remote parts of Colombia, said Steven Dudley, co-director of Washington based research group InSight Crime, which studies organized crime in Latin America. 

As a result, the group may feel little pressure to comply with Santos’ goal of reaching a deal in months.

“The Farc is a rebel group with a long view; they don’t have a four year term limit,” Dudley said. “

Don’t expect any major agreements to be hammered out in the government’s time  period.”