Rebels call truce as peace talks start with Colombia

HAVANA (Reuters) - Colombia's FARC rebels said on Monday they would call a two-month unilateral ceasefire, the first truce in more than a decade, as peace negotiators met in Cuba in the latest attempt to end the five-decade war.

President Juan Manuel Santos' government, however, has so far rejected any stoppage of military operations until a final peace deal was signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and even vowed to step up the offensive.

The FARC said it would halt all offensive military operations and acts of sabotage against infrastructure beginning at midnight on Monday night and running through January 20.

"This decision by the FARC is a decisive contribution to strengthen the climate of understanding needed so the parties ... can achieve the purpose desired by all Colombians," lead FARC negotiator Ivan Marquez said, standing outside a convention center for the start of talks in Havana.

The gesture is a sign that the rebels are keen to push talks forward to a successful end, something that was thrown into doubt by long, drawn-out speeches by its leadership calling for major changes to Colombia's political system.

The warring sides arrived in black luxury cars at the site where they will meet almost daily until the talks end.

A crush of journalists surrounded the bespectacled Marquez who stood with other FARC delegates including Dutch national Tanja Nijmeijer in Havana's plushest neighborhood.

Some FARC delegates wore reminders on caps and T-shirts of Simon Trinidad, an official guerrilla negotiator who is in prison in the United States. Others shouted "Long Live the Army of the People."

The head of the government's delegation, Humberto de la Calle, smiled and waved as he entered but gave no declaration.

Officials want the talks held in the strictest possible secrecy, which is likely one reason they are in communist Cuba, where the government is expert at controlling information.

Colombia's war has dragged on for nearly half a century, taking thousands of lives, displacing millions more and causing damage to infrastructure in Latin America's longest running insurgency.

Failure of the peace process would mean years of more fighting and further blight on the reputation of a country eager for more foreign investment and regional clout, yet which has been unable to resolve its most serious domestic problem.

Residents in western Cauca province, one of the nation's most war-ravaged areas, celebrated the FARC ceasefire.

"We hope it's not just two months, we hope that it's definitive," Orlando Ramos, a resident in Miranda, Cauca, told local television.

"GRAIN OF SALT"

The announcement by the FARC could be a breather for oil and mining companies, the target of many FARC attacks in recent months as the group sought to hobble Santos' main source of international revenue.

The conflict proved to be intractable in three previous peace processes, but both the government and the FARC have expressed optimism that this time might be different.

Santos wants an agreement within nine months, although the two sides face plenty of thorny issues in their five-point agenda, which will begin with rural development.

The other points are the political and legal future of the rebels, a definitive end to the conflict, the problem of drug trafficking and compensation for war victims.

"You have to take this announcement with a grain of salt," Felix Lafaurie, head of Colombia's National Federation of Cattle Ranchers, said on Colombian radio.

"I hope this is going to be a sign of the FARC's good will and not that they'll then take swipes on substantive issues."

The vast majority of Colombians support the peace process, although they think it will ultimately fail, but even so, the talks are the biggest gamble in Santos' political career and their success or failure may decide the next election in 2014.

The conflict dates back to 1964 when the FARC emerged as a communist agrarian movement intent on overturning Colombia's long history of social inequality and it hit its strongest point in the 1990s when it controlled swathes of the country.

In the early 2000s, billions of dollars in U.S. aid, better intelligence and increased mobility began to turn the tide of the war in favor of the government.

The FARC has lost at least half a dozen top commanders and been pushed back into remote jungle hideouts in recent years, though the rebels are far from a spent force and still wage attacks against security forces and economic infrastructure.

Violence was among the reasons previous talks failed. In the last attempt from 1999 to 2002, the government broke off negotiations after the FARC hijacked an airplane.

"The FARC have heard the voice of many Colombians, that rightly have been skeptical about its willingness to reach an end to the war, given the past," said Juan Fernando Cristo, a senator for the Liberal Party.

"The decision for a unilateral truce should fill us with optimism about what's coming at the negotiating table."

(Additional reporting by Jack Kimball, Helen Murphy, Nelson Bocanegra, Monica Garcia and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota; Writing by Jack Kimball; Editing by Jane Sutton and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/farc-declares-ceasefire-peace-talks-start-colombia-153102583.html

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