THE PRAGMATIST: FARC Stance May Not Bode Well for Colombian Economy

Timochenko, the supreme leader of the FARC guerrillas, said Wednesday the June deadline for the peace talks announced by Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos is "an expectation he is generating on his own," in an interview with communist newspaper Voz. According to Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, alias "Timochenko," it is "contrary to what was agreed in the letter and the spirit of the exploratory meetings." – Colombia Reports

Dominant Social Theme: Peace is good and FARC will participate in negotiations with a spirit of goodwill.

Free-Market Analysis: In a number of articles now we've reported on former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's perspective that negotiations with Colombia's FARC would not bear fruit.

Current Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has been pursuing negotiations with the upper echelon of FARC but now it seems Uribe's perspective may be proving to be the correct one.

FARC supreme leader, Timochenko, has just announced that Santos's deadline of June to start peace talks is "an expectation he is generating on his own." FARC had agreed to start peace talks in Oslo on October 8, which are scheduled to continue thereafter in Cuba's capital, Havana. A tentative peace schedule delineating six issues necessary for the open-ended discussion agenda has already been signed. Santos nonetheless announced the June deadline last week.

Here's some more from the article:

Santos last week imposed the time limit of June 2013 for advances to be made in the peace agreement that was recently signed and made official in Cuba, after which negotiations will be stopped if there are no concrete advances between the months of April and June.

Timochenko has cast doubt on the realism of this limitation though saying, "To get to Havana and have the exploratory meeting took us two years, when initially it was thought to be a matter of weeks."

"There is no cut-off date agreed, so the statement of the president is difficult for us to take in this way," said the commander of Colombia's largest guerrilla group.

FARC leaders do not sound chastened. Timochenko pointed out: "It is absurd to say that we have been forced to sit at the table. It is the State who returns to the table of talks with the FARC."

At one point, FARC was granted a demilitarized zone "the size of Switzerland" but, in fact, FARC just added to their resources and continued the struggle.

Uribe's position is that negotiations are senseless until FARC is weakened to the point where its leaders feel there is no choice but to cooperate. To this end, Uribe targeted the upper echelon of FARC while Santos has merely directed military activities against the rank-and-file.

Uribe also went on the attack on Thursday in an interview posted at Colombia Reports that was conducted by Bogata public television.

According to an article accompanying the interview, he demanded Thursday that a socialist political enemy Ivan Cepeda "clarify his relationship to guerrilla group FARC ... Mister Ivan Cepeda has not clarified his ties to the FARC," Uribe added.

Conclusion: Along with election uncertainties in Venezuela, ongoing difficulties with the peace talks may retard the considerable economic progress that has taken place in Colombia. That would be too bad.