Colombian ex-senator and peace advocate Piedad Cordoba has denied the FARC wants a new demilitarized zone (DMZ) in order to negotiate with the government.
Cordoba, who liaises with the rebel organization in her role as the leader of Colombians For Peace, said the group’s leader “Timochenko” had been wrong to suggest he wanted to restart the failed peace talks which took place in the El Caguan DMZ between 1999 and 2002.
This had created confusion, said Cordoba, who questioned the FARC’s use of words. “I don’t understand why [Timochenko] used the matter of Caguan, when he could have said, ‘Let’s pick up the documents that were studied in El Caguan,'” she said.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos reacted angrily to the FARC statement on his Twitter account on Tuesday, telling the guerrillas, “Forget about another Caguan.”
In response, Cordoba told Colombian news network CM& Thursday that there was no suggestion of withdrawing the army from any part of the country. She said, “What should be cleared up regarding this [FARC] statement is that it is not trying to repeat El Caguan as a DMZ. This doesn’t even merit a discussion as it is tangling us up in topics which divert from the real issues.”
Iin her view, a negotiating agenda based on discussions of privatization and the mining industry should be urgently formulated.
Cordoba claimed the FARC remain willing to release six kidnapped members of the security forces; but reiterated her call for the rebels to release all 11 security hostages they were holding.