MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Santos invites Brazil to list the FARC guerrilla as a “terrorist group”

The Colombian president with Lula da Silva

Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos said the best way Brazil can help to find a solution to the internal conflict of Colombia is by declaring the FARC guerrilla a “terrorist group”.

“This is an internal problem of Colombia and Brazil could collaborate by listing FARC where it deserves to be and that is categorizing it as a ‘terrorist group’” said Santos in an interview with Folha de Sao Paulo.

He added that the only way “we can establish some form of dialogue with FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces) is if they abdicate terrorist actions so that if Brazil and the rest of the world understand this, they will be ever more isolated”.

The United States and the European Union have FARC listed as ‘a terrorist group’.

The strong statement was interpreted as an answer to the recent FARC proposal to present its case before Unasur (Union of South American Nations), which was rejected point blank by the Santos administration.

“I don’t think Unasur is the right forum to listen to terrorist groups” said President Santos who asked his Brazilian counterpart to adopt a similar attitude.

Brazil has on several occasions refused to list FARC as a terrorist group allegedly not to be eliminated as a possible contributor in any attempt to establish some kind of possible mediation between the Colombian government and the guerrilla group which is closely linked and financed by the illegal drugs industry.

“Nothing justifies terrorism as an instrument of political strife”, said Santos following his meeting with President Lula da Silva, since “South America is not a region of conflicts, uprisings, non political participation or censorship”, underlined Santos who ended Thursday a two day state visit to Brazil.