Europe, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: Questions Surround Foreign Role in Hostage Rescue

Constanza Vieira*

BOGOTA, Jul 7 2008 (IPS) - Among the many questions raised by Operation Check, which ended with the Jul. 2 release of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) hostages Ingrid Betancourt, three U.S. contractors and 11 members of the Colombian army and police, is the role played by the United States, France and Switzerland.

According to the leftwing Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA)’s publication Polo, launched on Jul. 4, there are between 2,000 and 3,000 U.S. military contractors working in Colombia, like the three who were freed with Betancourt.

“Many of the decisions taken in Colombia [follow] prior consultations with the United States,” a source described by Polo as “close to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá” told the newspaper.

Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos himself said that the rescue operation had been the subject of consultation with U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield “a week” or “10 days” in advance, and Brownfield had given it his approval.

Brownfield, for his part, said he had been informed of the operation “two weeks” in advance.

Santos pointed out that Colombian President Álvaro Uribe had promised the governments of the United States and France not to attempt, without their prior approval, a military rescue of U.S. hostages Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes, and of Betancourt who has dual Colombian-French nationality.

France has not said whether it was consulted beforehand, but on Jun. 26 two recognised European facilitators working for a humanitarian exchange of prisoners arrived in Colombia and on Jun. 27 asked for government permission to contact the FARC “in the south of the country,” Minister Santos said on Jun. 29.

The European facilitators “have not informed us that they have made any contact,” he said at that time.

Meetings between facilitators and the FARC are not normally publicised, but the government decided to leak this news because their presence contributed to “the soap opera,” as Santos called the intelligence operation to trick the FARC rebels guarding the hostages.

IPS learned that the French and Swiss facilitators met that very day with a member of the FARC high command who acted as a courier to and from “Alfonso Cano”, the rebels’ top commander.

The mission’s principal success was reestablishing contact between the Europeans and the FARC high command for the first time since the death of “Raúl Reyes”, previously the guerrillas’ main interlocutor, who was killed Mar. 1 in a Colombian military action on Ecuadorean territory.

The talks ranged “over many subjects, with no taboos,” a European source close to the negotiations, who requested anonymity, told IPS. Among several proposals discussed was the release of two hostages, whose identity could not be established.

Cano sent word that the facilitators could wait for answers to the series of proposals, but they replied that it was too dangerous, both for themselves and for the FARC. They were in a very remote location, which they had never been to before, but there was Colombian army presence in the area.

The facilitators returned to the Colombian capital on Jul. 1, and the next day the hostages were freed.

The French diplomatic facilitator Noël Sáenz, a former consul in Colombia, stayed in Bogotá and returned to France on the same plane as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Ingrid Betancourt, whom Kouchner had come to fetch. Jean-Pierre Gontard, the Swiss facilitator, apparently left for Geneva the night of Jul. 1.

Their meeting with the FARC was lengthy, “very positive”, and it was agreed that the contacts should continue, a European press source who requested anonymity told IPS.

The facilitators are “waiting for comments and an answer from Cano. With everything that has happened, it will take more time,” said the European source close to the negotiations.

“For the time being, there is no definite agreement,” the source said.

On Thursday Jul. 3, Foreign Minister Kouchner said in Bogotá that “they were two parallel operations, I don’t know whether they were coordinated or not.”

“It’s true” that there were two parallel operations, the source told IPS: “The meeting (of the facilitators with the FARC) and at the same time what they did in Guaviare,” the province where the hostage rescue operation was carried out.

But “they were not coordinated. Absolutely not.” The facilitators had no knowledge of the operation, the source said.

However, they knew some time ago that Bogotá was trying to bribe the guerrillas guarding the hostages to obtain their release. President Uribe announced the creation of a 100-million-dollar fund for that purpose on May 24.

The source said that “the only people” who knew about the rescue operation, and at the same time about the presence of the facilitators, were Colombian government officials.

“But there was no coordination. The Guaviare operation depended on a great many details, even on whether it was cloudy or not. An operation of that kind cannot be coordinated with another mission. That relationship is complex,” he said.

According to a source close to the rebels, located on the border between Colombia and Ecuador, the government operation has cast doubt on the role played by the facilitators from the “friendly countries”, which have been working for years for a humanitarian agreement to exchange FARC hostages for imprisoned guerrillas.

“Every time an agreement has been reached with the French and the Swiss, something has happened,” said the source close to the guerrillas. “Therefore, even though a humanitarian exchange is still being sought, there will be no more conversations. In the Betancourt operation they put the lives of the hostages in danger, so now there must be a change,” he said.

The source was referring to the bombing of Reyes’ camp at a time, as IPS was able to reconstruct, that three European facilitators were preparing to meet with him, and to the capture in 2004 of two other FARC negotiators, Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela and “Simón Trinidad” in Ecuador, as well as to an attempted meeting between the French and the rebels, frustrated by the Colombian government in 2003.

Sáenz and Gontard are officially recognised by Bogotá as facilitators, but they must report their presence in this country to the authorities.

Facilitators have met with Reyes a total of 22 times since 1999. During the failed peace negotiations (January 1999 to February 2002) in the southern Colombian region of Caguán, these meetings were semi-public.

During that period, Reyes and the FARC’s negotiating team made a highly publicised visit to Europe, and held two known meetings with European facilitators, in Norway and Switzerland. The rest of the meetings were held in Colombia, the European source told IPS.

After March 2002, the meetings have all been extremely discreet, with the goodwill of the Colombian government but without its knowledge of where and when they take place, a condition insisted upon by the facilitators, whose mission also has the political support of Spain.

Their last meeting with Reyes was in June 2007 and coincided with the deaths of 11 regional lawmakers held hostage by the FARC.

On that occasion, an official statement from the facilitators recommended that the parties make use of the services of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, constituted under Article 90 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, to establish how the 11 lawmakers had been killed.

An angry Uribe rejected the proposal and cancelled further facilitator missions to Colombia. However, he reinstated them this year.

*With additional reporting from Kintto Lucas in Ecuador.