6 November - 12 November 2017 - 16-min

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6 - 12 November, 2017
C
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World
www.NewDelhiTimes.com
NEW DELHI TIMES
Ex-rebel commander Timochenko to run for Colombia presidency
olombia’s demobilized guerilla movement
nominated Rodrigo Londono to run
for president in the South American nation’s
election next year, keeping the former
top commander at the helm of the rebels’
nascent political party.
Londono, better known by his alias
Timochenko, became the leader of the nowdisbanded
Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Photo Credit : AP Photo
Colombia in 2011 and has been a key figure
in the peace process to end Latin America’s
longest-running conflict.
Londono and President Juan Manuel Santos
signed a peace accord last year in which
rebels agreed to lay down their arms and
confess their war crimes in exchange for
state pledges to improve conditions in
Colombia’s poor rural communities and
facilitate the rebel movement’s conversion
into a political party. “The common people
and those who dream of a new country
Iran says supreme leader limiting ballistic missile range
ran’s supreme leader has restricted the
range of ballistic missiles manufactured
in the country to 2,000 kilometers (1,240
miles), the head of the paramilitary
Revolutionary Guard said, which limits their
reach to only regional Mideast targets.
The comments on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s
orders appear to be an effort by Iranian
authorities to contrast their missile program,
which they often describe as being for
defensive purposes, against those of
countries like North Korea, which poses a
threat to the United States.
“It is a political decision,” said Michael
Elleman, the senior fellow for missile
defense at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies in Washington. “I think
with the supreme leader saying it, it takes on
a little more significance.”
The range of 2,000 kilometers encompasses
much of the Middle East, including Israel
and American military bases in the region.
That’s a concern for the U.S. and its allies,
but Iran’s ballistic missile program was not
included in the 2015 nuclear deal that it
struck with world powers.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference
in Tehran, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari
told journalists that the capability of Iran’s
ballistic missiles is “enough for now.”
The Guard runs Iran’s missile program,
answering only to Khamenei. “Today, the
range of our missiles, as the policies of Iran’s
supreme leader dictate, are limited to 2,000
kilometers, even though we are capable of
increasing this range,” he said. “Americans,
their forces and their interests are situated
will have their representation,” said Ivan
Marquez, a former rebel leader who served
as chief negotiator during talks with the
government.
The selection of Londono falls in line with
previous steps the ex-combatants have
taken in recent months to ensure the group’s
historical leaders remain at the forefront of
their political agenda. The former rebels
have changed their official name but
preserved the Spanish acronym by
which they are known, the FARC.
The party is led by a political council
that consists almost entirely of leaders
who have spent decades with the
organization.
Polls within Colombia indicate the
FARC remains deeply unpopular,
though one recent Gallup survey
said the ex-combatants have a higher
approval rating than the nation’s
traditional political parties. Recent
corruption scandals and division over
the peace process have tarnished
many Colombians’ opinion of their nation’s
political leaders. Still, Londono and the
other former rebels vying for political office
are certain to face an uphill battle.
FARC leaders are hoping to mobilize longmarginalized
Colombians living in one
of the world’s most unequal nations. The
peace accord guarantees the ex-combatants
10 seats in Congress, and candidates for
those posts were also announced. They have
settled on a political platform that is scarce
within a 2,000-kilometer radius around us
and we are able to respond to any possible
desperate attack by them.”
However, Jafari said he didn’t believe there
would be war between Iran and the U.S.
“They know that if they begin a war
between Iran and the United States, they
will definitely be the main losers and their
victory will by no means be guaranteed,” he
said. “Therefore, they won’t start a war.”
While keeping with the anti-American tone
common in his speeches, Jafari’s comments
seemed to be timed to calm tensions over
Iran’s missile program.
By limiting their range, Iran can contrast
itself with North Korea, as Pyongyang
has tested developmental intercontinental
ballistic missiles that could potentially reach
the U.S. mainland and conducted its most
powerful nuclear test to date. Pyongyang
also flew two powerful new midrange
missiles over Japan, between threats to fire
the same weapons toward Guam, a U.S.
Pacific territory and military hub.
The Trump administration already
sanctioned Iran for test-firing a ballistic
missile in February, with then-National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn warning
Tehran that Iran was “on notice.”
President Donald Trump’s recent refusal
to re-certify the nuclear accord has sent
the matter to the U.S. Congress. The U.S.
House of Representatives voted to put new
sanctions on Iran for its pursuit of longrange
ballistic missiles, without derailing
on details, but will prioritize eliminating
corruption, promoting social and economic
equality and eradicating poverty.
Imelda Daza Cotes, who the FARC is
nominating for vice president, said the
party’s idea is not to change the nation’s
economic model but to improve it.
“We want a model that is more inclusive,”
she said. “A model that is more humane.”
The FARC was formed in the early 1960s
by guerrillas affiliated with Colombia’s
Communist Party. At least 250,000 people
were killed, another 60,000 left missing, and
millions displaced in more than five decades
of conflict between rebels, government
forces and right-wing paramilitaries.
The first year of the peace accord’s
implementation has been marked both by
key milestones, like the rebels’ disarmament,
and considerable setbacks. Dozens of social
leaders have been killed, and new illegal
groups have moved into remote parts of
Colombia formerly controlled by the FARC.
The rebels have also complained about dire
conditions in demobilization camps that
have made transition to civilian life difficult.
The launch of the FARC’s political party
has been met with resistance from leaders
like former President Alvaro Uribe who
warn it would turn the nation into another
Venezuela, the neighboring Andean nation
whose socialist government has brought the
country to economic calamity.
the deal.
Iran long has insisted its ballistic missiles are
for defensive purposes. It suffered a barrage
of Scud missiles fired by Iraq after dictator
Saddam Hussein launched an eight-year war
with his neighbor in the 1980s that killed 1
million people. To build its own program,
Tehran purchased North Korean missiles
and technology, providing much-needed
cash to heavily sanctioned Pyongyang.
Iran today likely has the capability to
go beyond 2,000 kilometers with its
Photo Credit : AP Photo
Khorramshahr ballistic missile, though it
chose to limit its range by putting a heavier
warhead on it in testing, Elleman said.
“It will be interesting to see how Iran
reconciles this Khorramshahr missile with
the supreme leader’s dictate,” he said. “Iran
may say, ‘Well, we’re fitting it with this
big warhead so we’re not exceeding this
limitation,’ but the modification is very
simple.”
The Gulf Arab nations surrounding Iran,
while hosting American military bases,
also fly sophisticated U.S. fighter jets that
Iranian forces can’t match. The ballistic
missiles provide leverage against them, as
Uribe blasted the FARC candidates as
“delinquents” guilty of crimes against
humanity.
“We will confront them,” he pledged.
Many Colombians want rebels banned from
politics until they go before a special peace
tribunal. Former rebels are being permitted
to run for office before they are tried, but if
the court orders them detained, that sentence
could prevent them from continuing to
participate in politics.
“Political participation is guaranteed in
the accords,” Rodrigo Rivera, Colombia’s
peace commissioner said. “But it’s not
unconditional.”
Most rebels will be spared of any jail time
under the agreement’s terms.
Londono was hospitalized in July following
a stroke and has largely kept a low profile
since the peace accord’s signing.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office of
Latin America think tank said the former
rebel commander is likely the FARC’s best
candidate for president. He is considered
less polarizing than other FARC leaders
and many associate him positively with the
group’s decision to pursue peace.
“I guess the old guard feels this is there
time,” he said. “It’s now or never if they’re
going to do this.”
Credit : Associated Press (AP)
well as the U.S.-made anti-missile batteries
their neighbors have bought, according to
Tytti Erasto, a researcher at the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute.
“Iran’s pattern of missile testing — which
has sought to address the long-standing
problem of poor accuracy — is consistent
with the program’s stated purpose as a
regional deterrent,” Erasto wrote. “It also
reinforces the argument that Iran’s missiles
are designed to be conventional, not
nuclear.” Still, Iran could use the missiles
as “a tool of coercion and intimidation,”
said Behnam Ben Taleblu, the senior Iran
analyst at the Washington-based Foundation
for Defense of Democracies, which takes a
hard line on Tehran and is skeptical of the
nuclear deal.
“A secure Islamic Republic that does
not fear kinetic reprisal is more likely to
engage in low-level proxy wars and foreign
adventurism, much like we see today,” he
said.
Meanwhile on 31st October, Iran broke
ground at its Bushehr nuclear power plant
for two more atomic reactors to generate
electricity. State television quoted Ali Akbar
Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, as saying the first new
reactor would go online in seven years,
while a third would be active in nine years.
Russia will provide assistance in building
the new reactors as Moscow helped bring
Bushehr online in 2011. It marks the first
expansion of Iran’s nuclear power industry
since the atomic accord.
Credit : Associated Press (AP)