BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil will step up air surveillance along its border with Colombia but has no plans to mediate peace talks with its neighbour’s Marxist rebels, presidential front-runner Dilma Rousseff said yesterday. Tensions between the countries rose in July when outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe complained that Brazil was belittling the threat that the Marxist guerrilla group FARC posed to Colombia and the region.
Last week the FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, proposed holding talks with the UNASUR group of South American nations as a step toward negotiating an end to their four-decade-old war, but the government rejected the offer as “unacceptable.”
“We have a clear position against drug trafficking and therefore there’s no reason, unless Colombia requests it, to engage in any pacification activities or dialogue with the FARC,” Rousseff told reporters after meeting visiting Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in Brasilia.
“If they don’t ask, there’s no reason for us to participate because the FARC is not Brazil’s problem,” said Rousseff, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s former chief of staff. Historically, Brazil has been reluctant to get involved in internal conflicts in the region. The Lula government, however, has helped free some hostages held by the FARC at Colombia’s request.
Rousseff, who has a double-digit lead over her closest rival in opinion polls, said she would make relations with Colombia a priority if she becomes president, citing Brazil’s plans to buy unmanned aircraft to patrol its border with Colombia and help combat drug trafficking.
“For Brazil and Colombia the policing of the border is crucial,” she said.
Rousseff’s main rival in the Oct. 3 election, opposition candidate Jose Serra, has accused Rousseff’s Workers’ Party of having links to the FARC.
While the Workers’ Party belongs to a loose alliance of left-wing groups in Latin America that included FARC representatives, Rousseff and the party’s top brass deny any direct links to the guerrillas.
Colombia’s long conflict with the FARC is waning after the government sent troops to retake areas once under guerrilla control and drove rebels into remote rural areas with the help of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
