HAVANA—President Juan Manuel Santos and leaders of Colombia’s largest rebel group vowed to end Latin America’s longest-running armed conflict in the coming months after reaching a breakthrough in talks that put the country closer to peace that it has been in half a century.
Speaking in Havana where talks between the sides had been dragging on for years, Santos announced on Wednesday that government and rebel negotiators, prodded by Pope Francis to not let a historic opportunity for peace slip away, had set a six-month deadline to sign a final agreement.
After that, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), would demobilize within 60 days.
“We are on different sides, but today we advance in the same direction, in the most noble direction a society can take, which is toward peace,” said Santos, minutes before a forced, cold-faced handshake with the military commander of the FARC guerrillas, known by his alias Timochenko.
The US government lauded the breakthrough, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying that “peace is now ever closer for the Colombian people and millions of conflict victims.”
In a joint statement Santos and the FARC rebels said they had overcome the last significant obstacle to a peace deal by settling on a formula to punish human-rights abuses committed during about 50 years of bloody, drug-fueled fighting.
The formula is designed to demand accountability from belligerents while insulating a deal against possible legal challenges from victims.
Under the terms reached, rebels that confess abuses to special peace tribunals, compensate victims and promise not to take up arms again will receive from five to a maximum of eight years of labor under unspecified conditions of confinement, but not prisons.
War crimes committed by Colombia’s military will also be judged by the tribunals and combatants caught lying will face penalties of up to 20 years in jail.
While a final accord may be within reach, the huge challenges of implementing it are just beginning. Negotiators must still come up with a mechanism for rebels to demobilize and then the government needs to come up with additional money to spread the benefits of peace in parts of Colombia’s vast, jungled countryside that have known little else than war.
A more immediate test will come in the form of a referendum, in which Colombians will get a chance to endorse or reject any deal, which must also clear congress. Foreshadowing what’s likely to be a bitter political fight, conservative former President Alvaro Uribe lashed out at the Wednesday’s agreement, calling it a gift to the FARC and Venezuela’s “tyranny,” even before details were known.
“This is a bad example for society that will generate more violence,” said Uribe, whose military offensive last decade winnowed the FARC’s ranks and pushed its leaders to the negotiating table.
Wednesday’s agreement was reached after a week of frenzied negotiations away from the klieg lights of Havana at the Bogota apartment of a former president of Colombia’s constitutional court, two of the six lawyers involved in the talks told the AP.
Negotiators said the surprise advance came as rebels rushed to demonstrate progress ahead of a visit this week to Cuba by Pope Francis, who during his stay on the communist-led island, warned the two sides that they didn’t have the option of failing in their best chance at peace in decades.
“Without even being present physically in the room, he was a very important presence,” said Douglass Cassel, a University of Notre Dame law professor who represented the government in the talks.
The sticking point was what would happen if the FARC lied to special tribunals and guarantees that the rebels wouldn’t be extradited to the US, where they face charges for cocaine trafficking, if they honored their commitments, according to Cassel. The breakthrough came during a marathon 20-hour negotiating session last Thursday that wrapped up at 5:30 a.m., just three hours before the FARC’s advisers were on a flight to Havana to get the commanders’ blessing.
Image credits: AP/Desmond Boylan