News / Interviews

Colombia-FARC deal aimed at legalizing drug trade: Analyst

Tuesday, 27 September 2016 1:31 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 27 September 2016 1:34 PM ]

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (L at center) and the head of the FARC guerrilla Timoleon Jimenez, aka Timochenko, shake hands during the signing of the historic peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in Cartagena, Colombia, on September 26, 2016. (AFP photo)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Dennis Small, a Latin America expert from Leesburg, about the peace accord reached between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC rebels).

Small told Press TV’s “Top 5” program that the Colombian government and the FARC rebels struck the deal to legalize drug trade.

He referred to the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC to end deadly clashes in the Latin American country, saying that “this is an agreement not for peace but for drug legalization.”

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and rebel leader Timoleon Jimenez, known as Timochenko, signed the deal which formally ends the 52 year civil war at a ceremony in the Caribbean city of Cartagena on Monday.

The political analyst went on to say that President Santos legalized medical marijuana, adding that “the health minister of the Santos government in Colombia has openly announced that they will use the openings now to export marijuana internationally and to convert Colombia into an exporter of marijuana the way Chile exports wine.”

He also maintained that the Latin American country has doubled the production of coca for two years in the FARC-controlled southwestern area of the country. “Colombia is now the largest source of coca for the United States exceeding Peru and Bolivia combined,” Small noted.

“So, I think what we are dealing with here is actually an elaborate operation involving the United States government of [Barack] Obama, the British government and definitely Santos who is very close to Tony Blair [former prime minister] in the United Kingdom, whose outcome is intended to be not peace but drug legalization,” he warned.

Under the peace agreement, the Colombian government is obligated to engage in an aggressive land reform, to overhaul its anti-narcotics policies, and to expend them into underdeveloped regions in the country. In turn, FARC will start to withdraw its troops from their jungle and mountain hideouts and relocate them into UN disarmament camps.

FARC is the largest rebel group in Colombia and has an estimated 7,000 fighters. It has been at war with the government in Bogota since the guerrilla movement rose to prominence in 1964. So far, more than 220,000 people have been killed in clashes between the two sides and 6.6 million others have been displaced. Moreover, a further 45,000 people are said to be missing.

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