COLOMBIA: Colombian president Alvaro Uribe said yesterday he was willing to hold peace talks with the country's Marxist rebel leaders, a softening of his stance against guerrillas fighting a 42-year-old insurgency.
"If it is necessary to bring peace, or to step toward peace, I am willing to do it," Mr Uribe said a day after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, called for a conditional ceasefire.
"I have been thinking about this and the truth is my task is to look for options," added Mr Uribe, who won office in 2002 vowing to crush the rebels. The president, popular for cutting crime as part of his US-backed crackdown on the Farc, has ordered his administration to talk to the rebels about setting up negotiations aimed at a prisoner swap and an eventual peace deal.
The government is in preliminary negotiations with a smaller rebel group, called the ELN, and has disbanded more than 30,000 right-wing paramilitaries.
Finding terms with the 17,000-strong Farc, which governs wide areas of the Colombian countryside and has grown rich on the country's huge cocaine trade, will be more difficult. Despite scant popular support, the Farc says it is fighting to close the wide gap between the poor and the rich in this Andean country.
"The possibility of a prisoner exchange or peace agreement is still very slim," said political commentator Ricardo Avila. "What we are seeing is a tug of war in which each side tries to convince the public that they want peace." Thousands are cut down in the crossfire of the conflict every year while tens of thousands are forced from their homes into shantytowns.
Mr Uribe, who was re-elected in August, said any talks with the Farc would culminate in a constitutional convention, which would include former rebels and paramilitaries, to codify a possible peace accord. The president won office by criticising past peace efforts as too lenient toward the rebels, and has always insisted on the government controlling the national territory.
Last week he said he was willing to discuss a Farc proposal to withdraw troops from a rural area almost the size of New York City to negotiate the release of rebel hostages, including three Americans and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.
The Farc kidnapped French-Colombian citizen Ms Betancourt during her 2002 campaign and three American defence contractors during a 2003 mission to locate crops used to make cocaine. They are among 62 Farc hostages Mr Uribe wants to swap for guerrillas held in government jails.