Colombia, rebels agree to start peace talks

BOGOTA, Colombia — Prospects for an end to four decades of civil strife in Colombia inched closer to reality Tuesday as President Juan Manuel Santos announced that his government had agreed to start peace talks in Norway with the country’s largest rebel group in a bid to end the conflict.

The first open negotiations in a decade between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, will start in early October and span “months, not years,” Santos said.

Santos was referring to the open-ended, three-year negotiations that collapsed in 2002 after accomplishing little more than disillusioning most Colombians and leaving the FARC militarily stronger.

The new talks will begin in Oslo and then move to Cuba, Santos said. Representatives of the Venezuelan and Chilean governments will act as facilitators.

Conscious that many Colombians, including former President Alvaro Uribe, are deeply skeptical of the talks, Santos said he personally was accepting responsibility for launching the negotiations.

Santos acknowledged he feared raising false hopes and cautioned that the agreement signed with the FARC was not a peace deal but a “road map” for a process that will have to yield measurable results quickly.

According to terms hammered over six months of exploratory talks, the negotiations will focus on forging agreements on five main themes: agrarian reform; the rebels’ post-accord political participation; the insurgents’ reintegration into society; an end to drug trafficking, which the FARC allegedly uses to finance its activities; and ensuring the rights of the long conflict’s victims.

At a brief news conference in Havana, FARC representatives showed a recorded video of leader Timoleon Jimenez saying that despite the possibility that the Colombian government “will play the same tricks as last time,” the rebels agreed to negotiate because “peace is worth taking on the most difficult challenges.”