President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and the leader of the country’s largest rebel group said Wednesday that they were close to completing a peace deal to end Latin America’s longest-running guerrilla war, announcing that they had reached breakthroughs on
President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and the leader of the country’s largest rebel group said Wednesday that they were close to completing a peace deal to end Latin America’s longest-running guerrilla war, announcing that they had reached breakthroughs on some of the most difficult issues dividing the two sides.
“We are adversaries, on different sides, but today we advance in the same direction, the direction of peace,” Santos said at a news conference in Havana.
The president and the guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, set a six-month deadline to sign a final agreement and the guerrillas agreed to begin handing over their weapons 60 days after a deal is signed.
In announcing his surprise trip to Havana on Wednesday, where the negotiations have been taking place for nearly three years, Santos said on his Twitter account, “Peace is near.”
The FARC posted photos on Twitter of its top commander, Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timochenko, meeting with members of his negotiating team in Havana, with the message, “Peace has arrived.”
Santos and Londoño shook hands at the Havana news conference, encouraged by President Raúl Castro of Cuba.
The latest movement in the talks involved three central elements that had long frustrated negotiators: the transfer of weapons; how FARC members and government military personnel will be punished for human rights violations committed during the war; and the deadline to complete the deal.
The final deal is a compromise, in which those who confess to major violations of human rights or war crimes would receive punishments of up to eight years, according to two people familiar with the talks. The consequences would involve community service or labor that helps the victims of the war. They could also be subject to some limited form of detention, but it was not immediately clear what that would entail.
Detractors of the peace process have hammered at the justice issue, warning that the guerrillas would get off too lightly for atrocities, bombings and kidnappings in a war that has left deep scars. Critics of the government have warned that atrocities committed by the military would be overlooked as well.
