MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Colombian guerrilla proposes “political solution”

Colombia's largest guerrilla group called for a political solution to the country's decades long internal armed conflict with a “prisoners exchange” as the first step in that direction.

According to a release "from the mountains" dated June 20 but first published Monday on the internet the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, following on last month's electoral results and the "national clamour", proposes a political solution to the armed conflict.

"With the electoral results on the table and in the face of the national clamour, FARC ratifies its proposals for a prisoners' exchange and for a political solution to the social and armed conflict", said FARC.

However the government must before decide between some ministers who are striving to find "paths of reconciliation" and high ranking military officers who are pressing for an intensification of the armed confrontation.

These officers are calling for "more military action and more war as a way to pressure (the rebels) into surrender, an old, worn-out, failed Gringo strategy that has only intensified and extended the armed confrontation", adds the release.

Last month Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was re-elected by la landslide after Congress approved an amendment which allowed him to bid for a second consecutive term. President Uribe with the financial and logistics support from United States has managed to turn the tide against the decades long Marxist oriented guerrilla groups which are allied with the drug cartels.

FARC is holding hundreds of hostages including some 60 potentially "exchangeable" (Colombian soldiers, police and politicians and three U.S. defence contractors) that it hopes. In the same release FARC argues the May 28 re-election of Conservative President Uribe, "with a not very high turnout" was actually "a long way from the mandate he called for".

FARC with an estimated 20,000 strong armed force and a smaller rebel group ELN (National Liberation Army) have been waging a four-decade old war against a succession of elected Colombian governments.

Two weeks ago President Uribe announced he would launch his second term in office next August 7, by pursuing contacts with FARC despite the guerrilla's repeated refusal to negotiate with a president they describe as a "warmonger".

So far both sides have been unable to even agree on a "humanitarian exchange" of prisoners, since FARC has insisted on the creation of a substantial demilitarized zone to serve as the venue for negotiations on the swap.

However this is the first time FARC has proposed the Uribe administration a "political solution" to the conflict.