Colombian negotiators set to resume talks with rebels

Colombian negotiators left Bogotá for Havana in Cuba on 18 November, and were set to resume on 19 November talks to end decades of fighting with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), although this round of talks was initially planned for 15 November, El Espectador reported. Colombia's chief negotiator Humberto de la Calle Lombana told the press at Bogota's airport that Colombia knew "clearly and without ambiguities" what it wanted from talks and reminded the FARC that the polity and economics of Colombia were not being discussed. "the Government and the guerrillas have separately said what we both agree on: we are not arriving in Havana to negotiate Colombia's model of development nor government policies, likewise we are not asking the FARC to abandon or negotiate their ideas," he said. He reiterated the government's position that there would be no ceasefire nor any concession to the guerrillas during talks, as he said this had given the FARC advantages in previous parleys. De la Calle said the talks were to last months not years and should yield "practical, possible" results, not "disappointments." He boarded a Colombian airforce plane accompanied by other "plenipotentiary" negotiators, the Colombian High Commissioner for Peace Sergio Jaramillo, the former armed forces chief Jorge Enrique Mora, former Peace Commissioner Frank Pearl and the industrialist Luis Carlos Villegas. Former police chief Oscar Naranjo, another plenipotentiary negotiator, was expected in Havana on 20 November. Meanwhile the FARC and the other leftist guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), continued their violent activities inside Colombia. The FARC were attributed a bomb explosion on 11 November near a police station in Suárez in the southern Cauca department, which  injured 25 people. On 17 they were suspected to have blown up a part of the Transandino pipeline in the southern Nariño department, causing crude oil to pour into the nearby Sucio river, which flows into the larger Putumayo, El Colombiano reported. The ELN were separately the suspected authors of a bomb attack that killed one person and injured two on 17 November, in the district of El Tarra in northern Colombia, El Espectador reported.