Diplomats & Terrorists: Or: How I Survived a 61-day Cocktail Party by Diego Asencio

Author:Diego Asencio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: terrorist, terror, terrorists, ambassador, hostages, hostage, colombia, embassy, diplomacy, bogota, m19

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Colombian government decided to go on television and bring the crisis out of the cellar. Even though the media had been having a field day since the beginning of the takeover, there had been no real official line except a few obvious, obligatory statements from time to time. President Turbay, it seemed, was taking pains to develop his strategies behind closed doors.

When I heard the announcement that Foreign Minister Uribe Vargas was going to address the nation himself, I grabbed what I saw was a prime opportunity to knock Commander One out of his catbird seat. I’d been looking for some way to cash in on the stalemate between him and the Colombians. Even though the Commander held the guns to our heads, the real power belonged with President Turbay. Commander One was beginning to understand that he wasn’t in as advantageous a position as he’d first thought. After his initial derring-do, the political realities of his ambitious adventure began to figure in the Commander’s pipedream. The wax on his wings was softening. This was a game with two different sets of rules: the deadlock was now working against him, not for him, as he’d first supposed. Time allowed his enemy to formulate a sounder counteroffensive, and the Colombians could afford time when he could not. Day in and day out the terrorists had to try to second-guess the government.

I sensed Commander One was primed to accept a good argument because he was at a loss. He knew what he wanted to do, but he didn’t know how to do it without losing face. The Commander was acutely sensitive to the M-19 High Command, who were certainly monitoring his leadership carefully; he was like a teenager trying too hard to please his parents. The Commander was terrified of showing any weakness or lack of resolve, and that fear made him outwardly obdurate.

The Colombians had an equal problem: they were too anxious about tarnishing their image of effectiveness, strength, and an iron hold on the political exigencies involved. If there was going to be any resolution between the two groups, it had to be on middle ground, on the no-man’s-land between the M-19 and the Colombian government. We, the hostages, were obviously the ones in the middle, and we had the ears of both sides — a rare position for any hostage to be in — so we formulated a simple approach that would antagonize neither side and thus, we hoped, be acceptable to both.

With these thoughts in mind, I approached Commander One with a series of rhetorical questions that I thought might make him more receptive to reopening talks with the Foreign Minister. What would happen, I baited the Commander, if the Foreign Minister got on television and declared a hopeless impasse? Wouldn’t it be to his advantage if he, the Commander, cracked the door a bit to let in a little light so Uribe couldn’t justifiably make such an announcement? In this chess game, it was the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.