Associated Press
November 19, 2001
By Jared Kotler

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A right-wing militia announced Monday it was holding six mayors hostage to protest their attempts to reach grassroots peace agreements with leftist guerrillas in Colombia.

Police confirmed that several mayors from war-riven northwest Antioquia state have been reported missing since Sunday. Top officials in Bogota, including Attorney General Luis Osorio, condemned the abductions and demanded the mayors be freed.

In a communique, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, said it would free the mayors if they acknowledge their contacts with rebels pose a "high risk for the country."

The mayors are part of a larger group who held discussions recently with the leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's second-largest guerrilla faction.

The ELN and a larger insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are battling government security forces and the AUC in the South American country's 37-year war.

The mayors have asked the government to withdraw police posts from their towns in order to reduce the chances of civilians being caught in rebel attacks. But critics, including the government, say the mayors are bowing to guerrilla pressures and have no business engaging in direct talks with the rebels.

News of the kidnappings came as government peace envoys met in Cuba Monday with ELN delegates in an attempt to start formal negotiations. The AUC said it was not trying to disrupt those talks.

Antioquia state is one of the last remaining strongholds of the 5,000-strong ELN. The rebel group has been decimated in recent years by the AUC, an outlawed militia acting with support from landowners and rogue members of Colombia's U.S.-backed military.

Details on Sunday's kidnappings were sketchy. Local media reported the six mayors were from the towns of San Luis, Granada, Guatepe, Marinilla, Carmen de Viboral and Penal - all small, remote mountain towns.

State police chief Col. Guillermo Aranda said the mayors were intercepted on their way to a meeting. He could not confirm the AUC's claim that it was a meeting related to the contacts with the ELN.

In its communique, addressed to Antioquia's governor and posted on the group's Internet site, the AUC said it would not accept "dark pacts" between the mayors and the ELN.

According to the AUC, the ELN is trying to dip into town funds and reach political agreements to restore its lost influence. Clearing the police out of towns would amount to creating more rebel sanctuaries, the militia group added.

Colombian militia kidnap mayors for rebel talks

BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 19 -- Colombian far-right paramilitary forces said on Monday that they had taken the mayors of six small towns prisoner for trying to negotiate local truces with leftist guerrillas.

The mayors would be allowed to return to their posts "once they have accepted the inconvenience and high risk for the country of continuing to clown around with the guerrillas," said the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish initials AUC, in a statement.

Despite criticism from the national government and the armed forces, the six mayors have led a drive by a group of isolated municipalities in the northwestern province of Antioquia to strike bargains with Marxist rebel groups.

The Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army, or ELN, said recently that it would consider a six-month urban truce as long as local police stations were moved beyond the outskirts of each town. The government and national police both rejected the idea, but the mayors said they were acting to defend the lives and property of local people.

Antioquia police Col. Guillermo Aranda told Reuters that the six mayors had left Sunday for a meeting with an unknown armed group, but had apparently fallen into the hands of the paramilitary outlaws.

Aranda said the mayors, whose names were not available, were from the towns of Guatape, Marinilla, San Luis, El Penol, Carmen de Viboral and Granada.

"The AUC assumes responsibility for the safety of these six mayors, who were deprived of their liberty at a moment when they were preparing one of their strange negotiating meetings," said the AUC, giving no indication of how long it intended to hold the six.

Colombians in rural areas and small towns are often on the front line of a 37-year-old war which has claimed 40,000 lives in the past decade alone. They are at the mercy of armed extremist groups of left and right and are caught in crossfire when Marxist guerrillas attack local police stations.

The government met ELN negotiators in Cuba over the weekend in the first contact with that rebel group since talks broke down in August.

Pastrana recently asked the United States for permission to direct some of its massive military aid for Colombia -- intended to fight the cocaine trade -- against the rebels.