Slain Colombian Insurgent Held Secret Talks with U.S. Diplomats

Declassified State Department Memo Describes Clandestine 1998 Meetings with Colombian Guerrillas Central to Current Saber-Rattling in Andean Region

Washington, D.C., March 4, 2008 – A senior Colombian guerrilla leader killed in Ecuador last weekend in a cross-border raid by Colombian forces held secret talks with U.S. diplomats ten years ago in Costa Rica, according to a declassified memorandum of conversation published on the Web today by the National Security Archive and cited in today's New York Times.

The slain insurgents, Raúl Reyes, met secretly in Costa Rica in December 1998 with a U.S. diplomatic mission led by Philip T. Chicola, then director of the State Department's Office of Andean Affairs. The meeting was particularly sensitive in that the guerrilla group represented by Reyes and Marín, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was listed on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The FARC remains Colombia's oldest and largest rebel army.

Stressing "the absolute requirement for confidentiality," Chicola told Reyes and Marín that the U.S. wanted to "to develop a channel of communication" with the FARC:

I told the FARC representatives that while the [United States government] had no preconceived agenda or structure as to how the discussions might proceed, we wanted to use the meeting to describe our views on counternarcotics, the peace process, the [kidnapping of] New Tribes Missionaries (NTM), and the practice of kidnapping and attacks on U.S. interests in Colombia. Beyond that, we were open to discuss, or at least listen to, any topics the FARC wished to raise.

Reyes replied by noting the "historic importance he attached to the meeting," adding that "changing world and domestic circumstances" had brought the parties to the table.

He praised President [Andrés] Pastrana and his apparent commitment to a successful peace process. He also reflected on the "illegitimacy of the Samper regime and its rampant corruption by narcotraffickers. Reyes expressed satisfaction at the opportunity to talk directly to the [United States government] and claimed that information that reached US about the FARC via the press and other sources was invariably untrue and distorted by anti-FARC interests.

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