Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe insisted Monday that the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos has begun secret peace negotiations with guerrilla group FARC.
In an interview with radio station Actualidad, Uribe said that “what the government has done is seek negotiations with this group that abuses the people of Colombia.”
According to the former president, “some generals” and “civilians,” explicitly Enrique Santos, the brother of the head of state are in Cuba leading the alleged peace talks on behalf of the government.
Uribe rejected and possible peace talks between the FARC and government, claiming the Santos administration is to blame for what the former Presidents called the recovery of the FARC, who are “holding Colombia hostage.
The former president first mentioned the alleged peace negotiations with the country’s oldest and largest guerrilla groups on Sunday while speaking in the northern Colombian city of Sincelejo.
No member of the current administration have publicly responded to Uribe’s remarks.
Santos has never admitted to talks with the 48-year-old insurgency. In June, the president said it was too soon for peace talks.
“Only when we are absolutely convinced that the circumstances are right that this dialogue will be under our control, then we will think of opening a dialogue,” said the president.
Santos’ predecessor has always openly rejected peace talks with the FARC. However, in a 2010 diplomatic cable, the U.S. embassy in Bogota reported that the Uribe administration was “preparing ‘roadmaps’ for the next administration on how best to pursue peace agreements with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).
According to the embassy, then-Peace Commissioner Frank Pearl “acknowledged that the GOC had communicated with both groups in order to develop the road maps and build confidence.”
Since then, the Santos administration approved a bill that would allow displaced farmers to return to land stolen primarily by paramilitary groups, one of the demands of the FARC, and the FARC vowed to end kidnapping, one of the demands of the government.
The last open peace talks between the Colombian government and rebels were held between 1999 and 2002.