Ricardo Tellez the “foreign minister” of the FARC, accused Colombia’s former president Alvaro Uribe of “boycotting” the peace process.
The former president is the only one who is “boycotting” the negotiations between the FARC and the government of Juan Manuel Santos, complained Ricardo Tellez, the foreign minister for the FARC.
“The dialogues are supported by the U.S. the E.U., the Vatican, many countries, personalities of the movements associated with Colombia … the only one trying to put a spanner in the works is a small extreme right-wing movement led by former president Alvaro Uribe,” said Tellez in a telephone interview with newspaper La Tribune de Geneve.
Uribe has been very outspoken against the peace talks between the Colombian government and the country’s largest guerrilla group since before they were announced in August, slamming the government’s decision to “negotiate with terrorists” through media and on his Twitter account.
For Tellez the objective of these dialogues is “to lay down our weapons, but also above all to re-found our country which is the fourth most unequal in the world… we should reinvent Colombia, it is a very unjust country,” he said.
The guerrilla said that the FARC had offered a truce before the peace talks begin but the government hadn’t supported that idea.
“We proposed to adopt a truce from the start of the talks to prevent any unnecessary casualties but the government prefers to wait until the final agreement. Unfortunately experience shows this is a very good idea,” said Tellez.
According to the guerrilla the government and the FARC have an equal footing in the peace talks.
“Over 10 years the government carried on a great war against the FARC. Without a doubt, despite their important support, despite their technology, the army has not yet defeated us. We continue to have a presence in all the Colombian territories. If the military could defeat us they wouldn’t come to the negotiation table,” he said.
