In Havana, Cuba, where talks have been in progress for three years, Santos shook hands with Timochenko and said, “We are adversaries, but today we advance in the same direction, the most noble direction of any society, which is peace”. “We are now closer to achieving peace that deserves the Colombian brother people”, he said.
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The announcement also comes as particularly happy news to Douglass Cassel, professor of law and adviser to the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR), who had played a crucial role in the peace talks.
The Cuban foreign ministry, which is helping mediate the talks, issued a statement saying the agreement involved the creation of a “special peace jurisdiction”.
Both sides want to sign a peace agreement no later than March 23, 2016, said president Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday in Havana, after his first meeting with FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, alias “Timoshenko”.
Santos sat one seat away from Timochenko, the nom de guerre for Timoleón Jiménez, with President Castro sitting between them.
A week ago, Colombia’s Supreme Court president suggested that his institution will not block lawmakers’ attempt to include amnesties and pardons into the law by ruling them “unconstitutional”, therefore supporting Santos’ position. He is later due to travel to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.
The FARC said on September 11 that the parties were “at the doors” of an agreement on the issue.
The deal seeks justice for crimes committed during the over 50-year armed conflict that plagued the country and the region.
The Colombian conflict began in the turbulent aftermath of a peasant uprising with the founding of the FARC in 1964. The breakthrough came after Pope Francis, in a visit to Cuba this week, warned the two sides that they didn’t have the right to fail in their best chance at peace in decades.
The Colombian president announced the “key meeting with negotiators aimed at speeding up the end of the conflict” at short notice on Wednesday, with a message on the banner of its Twitter account claiming “Peace is Near”.
There are six broad items on the agenda at the talks.
Negotiators have so far reached partial accords on land reform, political participation for ex-rebels and an end to the illegal drug trade.
Since then, military confrontation between FARC and the Colombian government has been ongoing, with over 200,000 people having been killed as a result.
Despite the agreement, a smaller armed group remains at war with the government.
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‘Justice at heart of peace talks’.
