Colombia and its main leftist rebel group said Tuesday they have signed an accord to launch peace talks next month aimed at ending a stubborn, half-century-old conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
In a nationally televised speech, President Juan Manuel Santos called the pact a road map to “a definitive peace.”
It was reached after six months of direct talks in Cuba, with that country’s government and Norway serving as brokers following a year and a half of preparatory work.
The agreement, signed on August 27, does not include a ceasefire.
It also doesn’t grant a safe haven to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as the last peace talks did.
They ended disastrously in 2002 after three years of negotiations with the hijacking of a commercial airliner that ended the patience of then-President Andres Pastrana. Operating from a Switzerland-sized safe haven in southern Colombia, the rebels had never ceased to wage war, kidnap and traffic in cocaine.
Published 05 September 2012, 17:26 IST