Excerpts from State Department Daily Briefing, February 12, 2001

Excerpts from State Department Daily Briefing, February 12, 2001
Daily Press Briefing

February 12, 2001

BRIEFER: Richard Boucher, Spokesman
Washington, D.C.
(On The Record Unless Otherwise Noted)

Q On Colombia, the secretary is going to meet the foreign minister of Colombia tomorrow. And I wonder if you can give us the United States' position or comments about the peace negotiations last week in Colombia and what will be the subject of this meeting.

MR. BOUCHER: Sorry. What the --

Q What will be the subject of the meeting tomorrow?

MR. BOUCHER: The subject of the meeting? Well, I'm sure the meeting tomorrow will look at our whole relationship with Colombia. Obviously, it's a very important relationship to us.

The secretary has expressed his support for Plan Colombia and our interest in what President Pastrana is doing. Clearly, his discussions with the FARC will be an important topic; the overall counternarcotics effort, the overall progress of Plan Colombia, including the many social and economic aspects of that are of considerable interest to us. And I'm sure there'll be other issues in the bilateral relationship that will come up.

In terms of the talks that President Pastrana and the FARC commander had, they did announce a 13-point agreement to resume the peace discussions that the FARC had unilaterally suspended. We certainly applaud President Pastrana's tireless and personal efforts to move this process forward. Our sincerest hope is that his efforts and the desire of the Colombian people for peace will be realized with long overdue agreements by the FARC or with the FARC. Certainly there is now a procedural basis on which to build such agreements that could lead to a lasting peace. Now is the time for the FARC to demonstrate its willingness to advance towards peace.