Colombia says to de-escalate war if rebels uphold ceasefire

HAVANA Colombia’s government pledged on Sunday to de-escalate military actions against leftist guerrillas beginning July 20 if the rebels make good on their pledge of a unilateral ceasefire from that date.

In mid-June FARC rebels blew up a section of the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline and set fire to infrastructure in Catatumbo, north-eastern Colombia.

Earlier this month, Colombia’s top government negotiator had warned that time for a deal was running out.

FARC rebels had been observing a unilateral cease-fire since December, and it led to relative calm.

Santos has to balance his desire for peace with skepticism from right-wing opponents back home, who mistrust the FARC and accuse Santos of going soft after his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, had weakened the rebels with a military offensive.

The government and the FARC have also asked for a UN delegate and representative from the Union of South American Nations to help start discussions on monitoring the end of the half-century conflict.

The ceasefire ended, however, when a clash between the rebels and the government left 11 soldiers dead in the Department of Cauca, one of the FARC’s strongholds in thicky-forested southwestern Colombia. But it is an offer that comes with a catch.

The army confirmed Wednesday the missing soldier is being held by the FARC.

Just days later, the Armed Forces of Colombia launched an air attack on an FARC encampment in Guapi, a thickly forested jungle area near the Pacific Ocean in the same Cauca Department.

Third, a bilateral truce can be a promising step forward, but only if it can be monitored by a neutral body under the co-ordination of the worldwide community.

Negotiators have tentatively agreed to implement the bilateral drawdown of military action for four months as they work toward a permanent truce using a new streamlined negotiating process. This would allow the government to test a two-way truce inside restricted areas, before eventually extending the measure nationally. Thus, more than 1,000 armed actions would be possible during a five-month period but during the FARC’s ceasefire of the same length, only 112 were counted, the vast majority of which were committed by the Armed Forces. The next few weeks will show whether the government and the guerrilla movement have the willingness to embark upon on a new stage of negotiations, or whether the talks will remain in troubled waters.