Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos told the Financial Times over the weekend that he was determined to broker a peace between the government he leads and the FARC guerillas who for almost five decades have waged war against it. "La paz, ni un paso p'atrás", he says -- "Peace, not a single step backward." "My sons and daughter used to say that to me when I was defence minister," he told the paper from his heavily guarded presidential SUV. "So now I cannot let them down, nor any Colombian." He added, "I am more optimistic now than a year ago. What motivates me to be this optimistic is that I see real willingness from the counterpart in reaching an agreement. What we have achieved so far is more than what we have achieved in the previous attempts.
Talks with the FARC, which began one year ago this month in Havana, Cuba, have yielded agreements on two of the six issues on the peace agenda, including land reform - perhaps the most weighty of them all. An agreement was also reached on future political participation for the FARC if they put down their arms, which leaves disarmament, drug trafficking, rights of victims and peace deal implementation to be worked out. The drug trade is next up on the agenda. The FARC's estimated 8,000 remaining fighters are said to control about half of the $5 billion annual revenues coming from the cocaine trade in Colombia, though they deny profiting from it.
Studies say that nearly a quarter of a million people have died in violence between the FARC and the Colombian government since the FARC formed as the militant wing of the Colombian Communist Party in 1964. But even as peace talks continue, no ceasefire has been brokered. And last week, Colombian authorities said they had uncovered a plot to assassinate former president Álvaro Uribe, who has opposed the peace talks despite the uneasy approval of a public sick of the conflict. "Colombia is passing from pride to shame," Mr Uribe told a radio station on Thursday, according to the Financial Times. "It was the country that won the pride in the fight against drug-trafficking, but today President Santos is taking us down to the shame of negotiating with the world's largest drug cartel, the FARC." Uribe's father was killed in 1983 in a botched kidnapping by the FARC, and in October his cousin was shot in the back during another kidnapping attempt by the group.
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