Colombia hails ‘important step’ in FARC peace process

HAVANA: Colombia and leftist FARC guerrillas concluded a key stage in talks on Friday aimed at ending five decades of war, as the rebels announced a truce for the upcoming presidential election.
The outcome of talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels and Bogota authorities is important for President Juan Manuel Santos’s May 25 re-election bid.
Santos faces growing opposition to the peace talks from conservatives, especially Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, a top candidate supported by popular former President Alvaro Uribe.
FARC members said the May 20-28 unilateral truce will include Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). Government officials however said they will continue to pursue the rebels.
Colombian and FARC representatives have been negotiating a peace deal in communist Cuba since November 2012.
On Friday the two sides agreed on ways to end Colombia’s vast illicit drugs trade, the third of a six-point peace agenda.
“Today we are very close, closer than ever to obtaining peace,” Santos told supporters in Bogota.
“This is a definite step, an important step, and great news for Colombia and for the whole world.”
Rodolfo Benitez of Cuba, whose country is a guarantor of the process, said the deal would see a campaign to eradicate illicit crops such as coca — the source plant of cocaine — and heroin. The plants will be forcefully eradicated if farmers insist on growing them.
Colombia and Peru are the world’s top producers of cocaine, a product that comes exclusively from coca bushes grown on the eastern slopes of the Andes.
The drug trade has fueled the leftist insurgency as well as right-wing paramilitary groups and organized crime.