FARC rejects Colombian govt plan for endorsing peace agreements
Xinhua, August 27, 2015 Adjust font size:
The insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rejected here Wednesday Colombian government's plan for submitting to the Congress a mechanism to endorse the agreements reached in the peace talks in Cuba.
"It is obvious that such situations contravene the commitment that all the items of the peace agenda should be discussed first in the talks," said Ivan Marquez, chief negotiator of the guerrilla, in a statement.
Marquez insisted that any decision must be reached first by consensus between the parties.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos proposed on Aug. 13 the creation of a legislative committee dedicated to endorseing a future peace agreement with the FARC, if the peace negotiations were successfully completed.
"We want to express to the people of Colombia that none of the initiatives being taken to the Congress by the Government unilaterally ... is binding on the FARC if they have not previously been agreed at the negotiation table, both the contents and the method of the legislative process," the FARC spokesman stressed.
According to Santos, the goal of submitting a bill to create a mechanism for endorsing any agreement is to gain time, given the slow progress and complexity of procedures at the legislature body.
"Any initiative outside of the agenda agreed between the FARC and the government would be the best way to throw away the previous work done by mutual agreement between both parties in Havana," Marquez told reporters.
He said the proposal of the "little congress", as the legislative committee has been called, was not discussed in Havana, in which case the administration of President Santos would not "respect" the "General Agreement" signed by the FARC and the Colombian government in Havana on Aug. 26, 2012, sponsored by Norway and Cuba.
That "General Agreement", which turns three years on Wednesday, set the agenda for peace and gave formal start to the peace negotiations.
"We are enemies of the improvisation and supposed solutions," said the leftist guerrilla in the statement read by Commandant Marquez.
The rebels expressed their concerns at hearing the proposals by the government in Bogota and not in Havana, as it indicates a disrespect for the rules subscribed before the countries guarantors of the peace talks (Norway and Cuba), in case of institutional adjustments, to be made without prior agreement.
Humberto de la Calle, chief negotiator of the government, said that statement of the guerrilla raised "frustration".
He said Santos administration will honor the agreements with the FARC. However, he added, "it is up to its (the government's) constitutional obligations and its sovereign powers to seek mechanisms to speed up the adoption of the required laws."
The Colombian government and the FARC have been holding talks in Havana since November 2012, aimed at ending the 50-year armed conflict that has left 220,000 dead and six million displaced, official figures showed.
To date, both parties have reached partial agreements on the three top issues of the six-point peace agenda --land, political participation and the fight against drug trafficking.
In this current round of talks, the delegations discuss issues related to the reparation of victims of the conflict, a matter regarded as one of the most complicated in the negotiations. Endit