winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and diplomats from Switzerland, Spain and Norway attended the meetings to facilitate the agreement. The last peace talks hosted by Cuba broke down in December 2002 after the sides failed to agree on a framework for negotiations. Uribe, a close Washington ally elected in 2002 on promises to crush Colombia's Marxist insurgency, has accused Garcia in the past of being the main obstacle to peace with the ELN. The ELN was inspired by Fidel Castro's triumphant guerrilla struggle in Cuba. It has waged a war against the central government since 1964, along with the much stronger 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
