CNN. June 13, 2000. Web posted at: 7:21 PM EDT (2321 GMT)
HAVANA (AP) -- Colombian rebel leader Raul Reyes met in Havana on Tuesday with a Colombian exile who's playing a key role in peace talks aimed at ending their nation's long-running insurgency.
"It's to talk -- talk about how to advance the peace," Reyes told The Associated Press at a hotel in Havana.
Reyes, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, declined to comment further on his visit or say whether he would meet with President Fidel Castro. The Cuban government is not expected to be a party to talks, but Castro has said he favors a negotiated peace in Colombia's 36-year
war.
Reyes met with Alvaro Leyva Duran, a former Colombian minister of energy and mines, lives in Costa Rica, where he was granted political asylum in 1998. At the time he was under investigation in his homeland for allegedly receiving money from the Cali drug cartel.
Leyva Duran was formally charged in absentia last year, but many in Colombia consider the criminal charges a political vendetta by former President Ernesto Samper.
Reyes traveled last week to Alcala de Henares, Spain, where he and Fabio Valencia, a government delegate at the peace talks, attended a forum on the Colombian peace process. At the forum, the Colombians said they hoped to reach a cease-fire.
During a meeting in Madrid beforehand, Reyes and Valencia talked with Antonio Garcia, military chief of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's other major guerrilla group. It was the first time since failed 1992 peace talks that Colombia's two most important rebel groups had met with a
government negotiator.
The FARC, which has about 15,000 fighters, is the larger of the two main guerrilla groups. At least 30,000 people have died in the civil war.
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