MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Colombia and FARC ready for peace talks with support from Cuba and Norway

A bold move from President Juan Manuel Santos

Colombia's government will soon begin talks that could lead to formal negotiations for peace with the country's biggest guerrilla group, known as the FARC, according to a Colombian intelligence source.

As part of the deal to hold talks, the government has agreed that leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia would not be extradited to another country to stand trial, he said.

One aide at President Juan Manuel Santos' office has flatly denied that any talks are taking place, but a second aide said only that any official word on peace dealings would come from Santos himself.

Details of the accord are still being worked out, but the negotiations could take place in Cuba and in Norway, the source said.

However from Caracas the editor in chief of Telesur, the Venezuelan television news channel, Jorge Botero said that secret talks date back to May in Havana with the attendance of unofficial delegates from Colombia, plus representatives from Venezuela, Cuba and Norway.

“Formal dialogue is anticipated for next October in Oslo”, said Botero. He added that from Norway representatives from the Colombian government and FARC will then travel to Havana where “they will sit to negotiate and won’t leave the table until a peace deal is reached”.

A year ago the head of FARC Alfonso Cano announced that the guerrilla was ready for talks to end the half a century Colombian internal war. 

News of the peace talks is likely to anger Santos' predecessor Alvaro Uribe who has criticized any idea of talks with the rebels and has slammed Santos for wanting “peace at any cost.”

The originally Marxist oriented FARC but now financed by drugs and  which calls itself “the people's army” defending peasant rights, has battled about a dozen administrations since surfacing in 1964, when its founder Manuel Marulanda and 48 rebels took to jungle hide-outs triggering an internal conflict involving Colombian forces and thousands of recruited guerrillas.

The group has faced its toughest defeats in recent years as US-trained special forces use sophisticated technology and spy networks to track the leaders.

The FARC string of defeats began in 2008 with a cross-border military raid into Ecuador that killed Raul Reyes its second in command. Marulanda died of a heart attack weeks later and was replaced by Alfonso Cano, who was later killed too.

The drug-funded group is led by Timoleon Jimenez, known by his war alias ”Timochenko”.