HAVANA, (Reuters) – Colombia’s FARC rebels asked for the United States to join its peace talks with the Colombian government, saying yesterday it would speed up the process because Washington was making all the important decisions anyway.
The U.S. State Department said it disagreed with FARC’s assessment and was unaware of any effort to join the talks. Colombia did not respond to the request, which it would likely reject on grounds of national sovereignty.
“We are discussing a matter of interest for the United States,” Ivan Marquez, head of the FARC’s negotiating team in Havana, told reporters before entering the latest round of talks.
“Who is really determining what happens or not here is the U.S. government, so we would like to speak with the government of the United States … We would reach an understanding much quicker,” Marquez said.
For the past 15 months, Cuba has hosted talks aimed at ending a half-century guerrilla conflict, the longest in Latin America, which has claimed some 200,000 lives and displaced millions more. Norway has participated in the talks as a so-called facilitator.
The FARC, which stands for Revo-lutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, criticized a purported encounter between the United States and Colombia in which it said Colombian Defense Min-ister Juan Carlos Pinzon met with the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Reuters has not confirmed whether such a meeting took place.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said during a news briefing that the United States welcomed the peace process but that “we are not a party to these negotiations and not aware of efforts for us to be a party to these negotiations.”
