Land ownership issues at heart of conflict, which are fueled by cocaine trafficking and aggravated by far-right militias


HURDAL, Norway (AP) ― Colombia’s first peace talks in a decade were inaugurated Thursday a half world away with a demonstration of just how widely the two sides differ on how to end a vexing, nearly five-decade-old conflict.

The Oslo talks were brief, symbolic and largely perfunctory. Held at a secret venue, they lasted seven hours and were followed by word that substantive talks will begin Nov. 15 in the Cuban capital of Havana. The next round will tackle “comprehensive agrarian development,” though little else appears to have been agreed upon.

The government’s lead negotiator, Humberto de la Calle, sought to set a businesslike, cordial tone in brief remarks at a joint news conference at a lakeside hotel north of Oslo. He said the government seeks “mutual dignified treatment” in the talks and doesn’t expect the sides to see eye-to-eye ideologically.

His opposite number from the Western Hemisphere’s last remaining major insurgency, Ivan Marquez, said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had come to Oslo “with an olive branch.”

Then he began railing against Colombia’s “corrupt oligarchy,” its alleged masters in Washington, “state-sponsored violence,” the government’s “deceptive and backward” land policies, and the “vampires” of transnational oil and mining that FARC says are ravaging the nation.

“We want to denounce the crime of capitalism and neo-liberalism,” Marquez said during a 35-minute discourse that denounced some companies and individuals by name, including a cousin of President Juan Manuel Santos and a relative of one of the government negotiators.

Members of the government team, separated from the FARC negotiators at a long table by Norwegian and Cuban diplomats who have acted as facilitators, looked bored and slightly annoyed, some crossing their arms, others propping up chins with hands.

“There is a great chasm between the two parties that is going to be very difficult to overcome,” said political scientist Vicente Torrijos at Bogota’s Universidad del Rosario.

Land ownership issues are at the heart of Colombia’s conflict, which is fueled by cocaine trafficking and aggravated by far-right militias that have colluded with a military widely questioned for human right abuses. Colombia’s most fertile land has been largely concentrated in the hands of cattle ranchers and drug traffickers.

Colombia’s president has said he expects the talks to last months, not years, as did the failed 1999-2002 talks that were held in a Switzerland-sized safe haven. Santos ruled out a safe haven this time and rejected FARC’s request for a cease-fire.

“The government has said it is not a hostage to this process,” De la Calle noted. Santos has said he will break off negotiations unless there is measurable progress.

The Norway talks focused chiefly on logistics, and De la Calle said his delegation would return to Colombia on Friday after just two days in the Scandinavian country. A key member of its five-man negotiating team, former police director Oscar Naranjo, did not even attend.

A road map for the talks was signed in August following six months of secret negotiations in Cuba with the participation of that country’s communist government and the Norwegians.

They will be joined at the talks in Cuba by delegates from Chile and Venezuela, the latter of which has long been used as a refuge by FARC fighters. The facilitators’ exact role has not yet been explained.

This week’s negotiations were to have begun in the first half of October but were delayed by the red tape of suspending arrest warrants for rebel leaders and a dispute over the FARC’s last-minute naming of a polyglot Dutch female guerrilla, Tanja Nijmeijer, to its delegation over government objections.

A U.S. arrest warrant for Nijmeijer on hostage-taking and terrorism charges was not suspended. She was not in Oslo. De la Calle said she would join the rebel delegation in Cuba.

Also absent was one of the five men named to the FARC’s team of top negotiators: Ricardo Palmera, who is better known by his nom-de-guerre Simon Trinidad.

He is in solitary confinement at a maximum-security U.S. prison after being convicted in 2008 of conspiracy to kidnap three U.S. military contractors. They were held by the rebels for five years after their surveillance plane crashed in guerrilla-held territory, and were rescued that same year along with the presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.