LAURA FLANDERS: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! Sitting in for Amy Goodman, who’s on assignment in Nigeria, I am Laura Flanders.

Well, we’re going to go next to South America. We’re going to go to Colombia, where rebels have been making significant strides in their war against the government. The peace process has been disrupted as the military restructures itself to face this more formidable challenger. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to support the military, despite evidence of the government troops’ increasingly brutal involvement in suppression of guerrillas and in suppression — in collaboration with some of the more radical paramilitary organizations.

Mario Murillo, a longtime Pacifica producer and the former public affairs director at member station WBAI here in New York, has just returned from Colombia.

You spoke with a lot of people there, but you were there, most notably, for the inauguration of the new president. Tell us a little bit about the inauguration itself and what it has in the way of significance for a new era, a new moment in Colombian history, Mario Murillo.

MARIO MURILLO: Well, Laura, thank you for having me here today on Democracy Now!

As you know, seeing these kind of things happen, inaugurations are nothing but sideshows. It was sort of a circus behind — along the lines of what we see here in inaugurations. But, of course, the bigger, broader implications for the new president and for the situation that the Colombian people are facing right now is unprecedented, I would say, in recent history in Colombia. Andrés Pastrana is the new president. He’s taking over after four years of a failed presidency of Ernesto Samper Pizano, who was basically mired by the corruption scandal of his '94 presidential campaign, where he was accused of taking campaign contributions from the Cali cocaine cartel. His presidency was a basic wash. And then, with Pastrana coming in, across the board, people have a little bit more hope and a little bit more optimism that some things will change, and I think the fundamental issue being the question of peace. So there is a kind of a new aura about what's going on in Colombia right now.

But there’s also a lot of other factors that are coming into play, and it’s something that I — that we haven’t seen in recent years. One, of course, is the strengthening of the guerrilla forces, primarily the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America’s oldest and longest-running guerrilla organization in the region, and certainly in Colombia. They have had a series of victories, major military victories, in which they have defeated and led to the deaths of many soldiers, many of the state security apparatus, as well as the capture of many soldiers, basically putting them up on an upper hand. They have the upper hand right now militarily and politically because of the developments on the battleground. So, that’s something that we haven’t seen in a long time in Colombia, and it also comes at a time — Pastrana’s administration comes at a time when civil society in Colombia is playing an unprecedented role in trying to force all actors in the conflict that, of course, the government, the guerillas, as well as the extra state forces, the paramilitary forces, the right-wing paramilitary forces, to try to reach some kind of negotiated settlement to the long-lasting conflict.

LAURA FLANDERS: And also, though people in the U.S. may not be quite so aware of this, the Colombian situation has acquired a place on the international stage that it didn’t have before.

MARIO MURILLO: Absolutely. Absolutely, Laura. That’s something that’s another factor that’s coming into play. Yesterday in Durban, South Africa, in the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, of course, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa is receiving the mantle from President Andrés Pastrana, who was the head of the Non-Aligned Movement over the last few years. And in his meetings with Mandela, with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, with Fidel Castro, who’s down there, all of these major international world leaders, world players, many of which have been involved in peace conflicts of their own, peace situations of their own, have pledged a commitment to help the process along. And I think when we have people like Mandela, Arafat and Fidel Castro playing a role, it’s going to hopefully offset some of the role that the other international actor, and perhaps the major international actor, is going to play, and that is, of course, the United States.

LAURA FLANDERS: Well, let’s move to that right now. If Colombians were hoping for a consistent U.S. policy towards their country, most people would agree they’d be disappointed. There’s a lot of conflict in the administration itself, not to mention outside, about just what the U.S. role should be. An unnamed State Department official told a reporter for the Inter Press Service at the end of July that the U.S. needed to be involved. He said, quote, “If we don’t get involved, the situation won’t correct itself anytime soon. We’ll see more brutality and more human rights abuses and no meaningful negotiations, because the guerrillas are doing very well on the battlefield and making money hand over fist.” What about this conflict within the U.S. administration and the quandary, perhaps reflected in that comment, about what the U.S. role should be?

MARIO MURILLO: Well, that comment is kind of almost a joke, considering it makes it sound as if the U.S. hasn’t been involved all along. And obviously, the U.S. has been directly involved in the situation in Colombia, and, for the most part, some would say — and I think there’s a lot of evidence to it — have actually exacerbated the problem in Colombia in terms of human rights.

The agenda, at least the public agenda, of the United States vis-à-vis Colombia has changed somewhat, certainly with the transition of power from Samper to Pastrana. In the past, of course, the U.S. distanced itself from Samper because of his alleged links to narcotraffickers. It’s now — at least this is the way the Colombian media are looking at it — that the administration, the Clinton administration, is now not only focusing on drug trafficking as the fundamental agenda issue that’s between U.S. and Colombian relations. They’ve broadened it to include the issue of human rights. They’ve also broadened it to include issues of development, economic development in Colombia — of course, there’s a lot of issues around that, but we won’t get into that now — and also the issue of peace and trying to support a peace process.

But the fact of the matter is, is that there is an unclear — and the administration talking from many different sides of its mouth. There are many hawks within the administration, within the Pentagon, who are saying, “No, we have to step up our military support. If there’s going to be a peace process in Colombia, we have to step up the military support, precisely because of the defeats that the military in Colombia have suffered at the hands of the guerrilla.” Certainly, the U.S. administration doesn’t want to see the Pastrana government going into the negotiating table with a weak military. Obviously, they’re going to step that up. So, when they say that they’re supporting a peace process, they’re also supporting a militarization and a stepped-up approach. So that’s one of the things that we have to be cautious about in the months ahead as the developments continue in the country.

LAURA FLANDERS: You did a bunch of interviews when you were in Colombia, obviously, among others, for Our Americas, the syndicated radio program. Is there anything from those interviews that you’d like to share with us that could elaborate on some of these themes?

MARIO MURILLO: Well, I think one of the key players in the last four years during the Samper administration was Daniel García-Peña, who is the outgoing — he’s actually no longer the coordinator of the Colombian government’s High Commission for Peace, the office that’s basically been in charge of trying to establish some kind of framework for a dialogue in the country. And it’s been a very difficult road for him over the last four years as the conflict has escalated. Daniel García-Peña, he’s lived here in the United States, and he has a very good understanding of the political situation here in the United States. And he’s also been under a lot of fire there because of his positions vis-à-vis the guerrillas as political actors. And I talked to him, and he and I — one of the questions I asked him was: Why does he feel that Colombia now is ready for a peace negotiation, as opposed to in the past? And he made some comments which are pretty, pretty illustrative of how the certain — certain sectors within the Colombian government are thinking right now vis-à-vis the guerrillas.

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: I think that what has become quite evident to all Colombians is that the war cannot be won by any of the sides, by neither the guerrillas nor the government. I think that the tragedy of the Colombian armed conflict is that it is a winless war. And up until a few years ago, there were still many Colombians and many sectors in the government and the establishment that were convinced that a military triumph was possible, that it was possible to annihilate the guerrillas through military force. What the guerrillas have shown in these last few years is that that is simply not possible, that they will not be defeated. That does not mean that they are winning, because it is also quite clear that they are far from achieving power or taking over the political structure. The guerrilla activity continues to be far off in the mountains, in the jungles, and does not pose a threat to the stability of the Colombian democracy, which I think is a reason why the country has come to understand that neither the guerrillas nor the army are going to win this through war, and that the only solution and the only way to end the conflict is through dialogue.

MARIO MURILLO: But what do you see as the most difficult aspects as the country moves forward in the very initial stages of the peace process? What do you see as the most difficult aspects that might create some major obstacles in the future?

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: The first is, I do think it’s important to say that President Pastrana finds the most favorable conditions for putting together a serious peace process that any president has had in recent years. But that, as you well ask, does not guarantee that there are no obstacles or no difficulties.

I think the major problem is going to be in the moment that we begin to understand the complexities of peace, the sacrifices that must be made, the changes that must be introduced in the power structure, because even though I have said that the country begins to be conscious of the fact of the kind of changes we need, it’s one thing to have the theories straight, it’s something different to put it into practice. And once we begin to understand, well, what does that — what does district redistribution of wealth mean? What does redistribution of power mean? How is that new Colombia going to look after the peace process? When those real tough decisions become, let’s say, apparent and become concrete, that’s when the big test will come, the big test for President Pastrana, the big test for the guerrillas as political interlocutors. But the biggest of all the test is for the Colombian society to see to what degree it has really reached the point of understanding that it is time to deal with those root elements we talked about before, those social and political questions that, without — if they are not resolved, we will continue seeing armed conflict for many years.

MARIO MURILLO: How about the role of the paramilitaries? Because so far, we’ve been talking about the guerrilla and the government. What’s your view about this? And maybe you can kind of take off as a starting point the negotiations or the discussions that were had in late July with the paramilitary forces.

DANIEL GARCÍA-PEÑA: No, there’s no doubt, the paramilitary question is one of the most difficult and most complex of all of these — of building a peace process in Colombia. I think today the country understands that everyone who’s in the war, who participates in the war, who takes part in the war, must take part in the peace. So, we cannot exclude the paramilitary groups from any peace process, because that would simply guarantee the failure of the peace process.

On the other hand, we cannot simplify and put in the same category groups that are completely different and that have a different nature and different characteristics. The paramilitary groups cannot be treated as political rebels like the guerrillas are. The paramilitary groups must be dealt with by the state, first of all, to make it clear that the Colombian state does not support, does not patronize, does not foment the creation of the paramilitary groups. Unfortunately, in the past, that has been the case. There are several cases today that are being tried by the Colombian justice, and several generals are being investigated for participating in the in the creation of paramilitary groups. So, the first step is to deal with these paramilitary groups through the rule of law and through force.

Secondly, we must demand that these groups respect the norms of international humanitarian law. The paramilitary groups in Colombia do not attack the guerrillas. They attack unarmed civilian population. And while that continues to be the case, I think that that is a major obstacle for their participation in any kind of peace process.

And lastly, what I — as the paramilitary groups say that they are a consequence of the guerrillas’ insurgency, that therefore the peace with the paramilitary groups must also be a consequence of peace with the guerrillas. We must first start a peace process with the guerrilla movement and, in separate tables, in a separate negotiation process, find a way to demobilize and to reintegrate the paramilitary groups into civilian life.

MARIO MURILLO: Daniel García-Peña is the outgoing coordinator of the Colombian government’s High Commission for Peace, and I was speaking with him in Colombia about a couple of weeks ago during my visit. And he was talking about the paramilitaries, Laura, and this is one of the issues that I think is the most troublesome for the quest for peace, if you will, in Colombia. And that is that the paramilitaries don’t find it in — it’s not in their interest to really find any negotiated settlement to the conflict there totally. They’ve already declared — Carlos Castaño, the head of the paramilitaries, the umbrella organization of the paramilitary groups, stated in an interview a couple of weeks ago that they’re in an outright war with the ELN. Of course, when they say that they’re at war with the ELN, it’s really at war with the civilian population in which the ELN operates, and that’s the way they wipe out the ELN support base. And there is no chance that they’re going to be sitting down and have a serious dialogue with anybody in the government. I think that’s going to be the biggest problem.

And herein once again lies another problem of the United States policy. The U.S. talks strongly against the guerrillas and the idea of combating the guerrillas and the so-called narco-guerrillas, because of their alleged links with narcotrafficking, but they do not say much about the paramilitaries. In fact, Thomas Constantine of the DEA was there at the same time I was there. He was in Colombia meeting with high officials in the Colombian government, and they were asking him about links between paramilitary forces and narcotrafficking. And he basically said, “Well, I don’t want to talk about it. There probably are links. There are links between paramilitary right-wing forces and narcotraffickers, but it’s something that we’re not getting into.” But on the other hand, Barry McCaffrey, the drug czar, has been talking strongly and very, very — in very militarist terms as to why the narco-guerrilla is a problem and it has to be dealt with by the United States.

LAURA FLANDERS: That’s Mario Murillo, producer of Our Americas, a weekly report on Latin America and the Caribbean, heard on this network and others. Mario, in the last minute remaining, answer the question that is so often asked, which is: Why should people here care about what’s happening in Colombia?

MARIO MURILLO: I think it’s important, because Pacifica Radio, I mean, one of the trademarks of Pacifica over its history was the Vietnam conflict and how the United States escalated its presence there. And although I’m not one of the alarmists who’s going to say that the United States is going to step up its presence to a level of what we saw in Southeast Asia in the '60s and ’70s, the makings of that kind of escalation are all there. There are U.S. forces in Colombia operating at any given moment. There's about 300 to 350 U.S. forces. The United States continues talking in ambiguous terms as to the narco-guerrilla. They’re supporting the military strongly, ever so strongly — this year, $104 million; next year, another $104 million, have been sent down the pipeline, already approved by Congress to ostensibly combat drugs, but they’re really, of course, being used in a much broader plane. And I think as this kind of conflict continues to escalate, and while the Colombian people are clamoring for peace, the U.S. is not playing a positive role in that quest that the Colombian people have been fighting for.

LAURA FLANDERS: Mario Murillo. Listen for more of his reports on Our Americas, the weekly report on Latin America and the Caribbean. Thank you so much for being here with me here on Democracy Now!

MARIO MURILLO: Thank you, Laura.

LAURA FLANDERS: That’s it for Democracy Now! today. If you want to call our comment line, you can at 212-209-2999. That’s 212-209-2999. For a copy of today’s show or any other Democracy Now! program, call 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. You can also hear us on the web at www.pacifica.org, www.pacifica.org. Democracy Now! is produced by Zachary Fink and Janice K. Bryant. Errol Maitland is our technical director; Michelle García, our web spinner. Julie Drizin is our executive producer. From the studios of WBAI in New York, I’m Laura Flanders, sitting in for Amy Goodman, for another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!