By Richard McColl
BOGOTA, Colombia
President Juan Manuel Santos said that he has ordered his negotiating team to return to peace talks with FARC guerrillas in Cuba with the express intent of discussing the possibilities of a bilateral cease-fire.
“I have instructed the negotiating ream to begin, as soon as possible, the discussion about a bilateral and definitive cease-fire,” Santos said during a televised address late Wednesday.
The peace dialogues between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC guerrillas) and the Colombian government began in November 2012 and, after a break for the Christmas holidays, are expected to recommence Jan. 26, when the two sides will discuss the issues of the victims and how to end the conflict.
“We have begun to work on the agreements about how to lay down weapons and how to reintegrate those who abandon the armed struggle back into civil society,” Santos said before warning that “the most difficult is yet to come.”
FARC rebels, who committed to an indefinite unilateral cease-fire that began Dec. 20, responded positively to Santos’ remarks and released a statement on its website. “We have received with pleasure this statement made by President Santos that he is sending his envoys to Havana to start discussing a bilateral cease-fire.”
While the government had previously remained totally opposed to a bilateral cease-fire, fearing that as in the past any opportunity of this kind be used by the rebels to rearm and reorganize its forces, Santos announced that the guerrilla’s decision to adhere to their own truce “was a step in the right direction.”
In urging national reconciliation, Santos said, “We have a year of hard work and many challenges in front of us but also of great expectations." He went on to predict that "2015 will be remembered as one of the most crucial in our history.”
Santos’ declarations were met favorably by Sen. Mauricio Lizcano of the National Party of Social Unity who tweeted that this is an “indication that we are close to the end” of the conflict.
Predictably, former president and current senator for the conservative Democratic Center Party and outspoken opponent of the peace dialogues, Alvaro Uribe voiced his criticisms on Twitter. “Santos humiliates all Colombians with these lies first about a unilateral cease-fire and then a bilateral cease-fire which will be violated by the FARC,” he said.
