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Adalberto Roque / AFP - Getty Images
Commander Jesus Santrich, Maritza Garcia and Yury Camargo of FARC arrive at talks in Havana, Cuba on Friday.
HAVANA, Cuba — A unilateral ceasefire declared by the Marxist FARC rebels at the start of peace talks with the Colombian government ended on Sunday after the government refused to join the truce, the group said.
"With pain in my heart, we have to admit that we return to the stage of war that nobody in this country (Colombia) wants," FARC lead negotiator Ivan Marquez told reporters before going into the latest session of the talks aimed at ending Colombia's long, bloody conflict.
The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, declared the ceasefire when the talks began on November 19 in Havana, and gave the government two months to also lay down its arms.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos rejected the ceasefire from the beginning, saying the government would maintain the military pressure to keep FARC at the negotiating table.
Colombian officials have called the ceasefire a sham to gain international favor and accused the rebels of continuing their attacks.
Government forces have continued to attack and kill the rebels in their remote strongholds in the jungles and mountains of Colombia. They say the rebels may be planning a new offensive.
Marquez did not disclose their plans, but urged Santos to reconsider the decision not to lay down arms.
The two sides have been fighting since the formation of the FARC as a communist agrarian movement in 1964 in what is now Latin America's longest-running insurgency and a relic of the Cold War.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced in the conflict, which the FARC says is aimed at ending Colombia's long history of social inequality and the concentration of land and wealth in relatively few hands.
Officials say the FARC has been weakened by a U.S.-backed, 10-year-long government offensive.
But the group still has an estimated 9,000 fighters capable of continuing to inflict damage on Colombia's infrastructure and slow the government's plans to increase foreign investment in mining and oil operations.
The agenda for the talks calls for the two sides to address a number of difficult issues, starting with rural development.
In recent days, they have publicly disagreed about a sweeping land redistribution proposal by the FARC to hand over 25 million hectares (62 million acres), or more than 20 percent of the country's land, to the poor.
Government lead negotiator Humberto de la Calle this week called for a quicker pace to the talks, which Santos has said he wants ended by November.
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This is pathetic, the government doesn't want to give up the Land to be redistributed to the Poor that the FARC is asking for and the ones that are going to suffer is the same poor people who are struggling day by day to get something done with their lives. I also condemn the FARC for making people loose their belongings including their land as they have to be displaced to another places due to this conflict.
The majority of Colombians see FARC as no more than a narco terrorist group.Whatever political program they may have had has long ago disappeared .They are criminals who need to be in prison or finished off.They are very weakened and must be diminished further.The central government should use all the force necessary to eliminate them. They are terrorists and need to be treated as such!
Rocketero2011, do you even know about the FARC? You think the FARC deserves anything from the Government? These are people who regularly take innocent citizens captive to use as bargaining tools against the government, if one of their captives happens to give birth as result of all the raping they are subjected to, FARC just tosses that baby outside in the cold until it stops crying. In one paticularly digusting case, a captive teenage girl gave birth several times and her friend died giving birth before the government found and rescued her, she has no idea what happened to her children. Giving the FARC what they want would be like the U.S. saying "oh okay al-Qaeda and the Taliban, you've done enough indiscriminate killing, raping, kidnapping, child sex-slave trading, and drug trafficking. You've proven your point and earned a spot in our government and our country, welcome!" I hope each and every FARC member is hunted until the ends of the Earth.
Pathetic? You know what's PATHETIC? That, while the Cold War is decades over, the peasant-pawns of the 'leftist cocaine production and distribution network' - and the slightly more affluent '"fake police/paramilitaries" who, though they were created to fight cocaine traffic, have instead formed a sort of "right-wing cocaine production and distribution network" - as we want our American Wall Street Coke Heads to have all the "Capitalist Cocaine" they want (just as long as it's NOT "Commie Cocaine"!)' - are still going at it all these years later!!!
When We, The People Finally Rise Up & End The Hypocritical War On Drugs.....Then, but only then, should the FARC 'try, try again'!!!
Until that day, WE ARE PATHETIC!!!
I seriously doubt that wall street is to blame for the demand of cocaine in this country. I would be willing to bet Hollyweird has a far higher deemand for all the drugs than wallstreet. Can you say WINNING?
Not to diminish the story but today was the first time i heard of FARC. Read a fiction book where the male character was in Columbia on business and kidnapped by FARC. Kind of a weird coincidence
All 3 of you sound like idiots with Jimbo taking the lead.
FARC keeps trying to destroy infrastructure. How stupid is that. Everyone needs roads and bridges and power lines.
They are hurting the people they say they are fighting for.
Kind of like Hamas blowing up a power plant that also supplies them power
Kind of like the Tea Party keeps trying to destroy infrastructure......
Or the liberals trying to destroy the Constitution, our economy our rights.
I'm tired of the tea party blowing up power dams and train stations.
Right Roc? Ohhhhh, the evil Tea Party destroying the world.
The Taliban operates like FARC.
They are Sooooo Evil, they want to get rid of things like the debt. Just why would anyone want to get out of debt? They are Sooooo evil! Im glad there is no train station or a dam where I live!
Again, we see that Colombian elite refuses to share the wealth. FARC will succeed eventually. United States needs to stop helping the Colombian government oppress the poor in that country. Wealthy colombians are extremely vain and consider FARC a nuisance, that is, until FARC brings the message inside their comfortable nests. Mexico also treats their indian population the same, with the help of the U.S.
For those of you that do not know too much about FARC, I can tell you that your comments are totally ignorant. These people do not want something good for Colombia, all they want is to destroy, hurt and kill as many people as possible and all in the name of "the Colombian people." Funny that 95% of the "Colombian people" they are supposed to be fighting for to make things better and even, don't want to hear about them at all because of all the suffering and misery they had put the country through.
I have met two ex-guerrilla members and guess what ? They left the FARC because they realized they were lied to by their commanders. All those ideals and wonderful things that they were supposed to be fighting for were all just a whole bunch of LIES!!!!
For years the Colombian people were not able to travel freely around the country out of fear of being kidnapped by the FARC. My own brother was threatened unless he agreed to help them with a monthly 'Contribution" for the troops that were so "valiantly" fighting for the good of Colombia.
These so called peace talks have been tried before and they didn't do any good. The FARC is made up of people that have no morals or feelings because they have been brain washed since they were taken away from their peasant parents by the commanders at the top, and the so called "troops" that are marching all over the jungle barely get enough to eat and to survive with just because they had been promised that one day everyone will be equally treated and everyone will have the same in a country that only exists in fairy tales.
I'm not saying that the Colombian government is 100% right either, and that the country does not have problems that need to be solved but, those problems can be solved with a democratic government not by guerrilla people that have kidnapped, killed and destroyed soooo many of their own.
Tiene razon, Carmen.You are right!They are no more than a mafia terrorist thug group like the druggies in Mexico.They must be kept permanently on the run,infiltrated .imprisoned or killed.There is nothing to negotaite with them !
FARC has committed MANY..MANY Atrocities in my country, town and neighborhood. I also agree that they do no good for the people of Colombia and should give it up!!! My country is beautiful but ugly with these people in our midst!!!
The FARC does not want to redistribute land equally to the Colombian poor. That is the biggest lie these people try to make their own troops believe. Most of their members have been taken away from their poor honest peasant families, the same families they claim to be fighting for, only to be brain washed and taught to kill, destroy and kidnap in the name of the "poor Colombians."
98% of the Colombian people don't want to hear about "what the FARC is doing for them" because they have had to live with horrible misery and sadness for all the awful things that the FARC has done for more than 40 years. So many people have had to be displaced and had to leave everything they ever owned because FARC gave them no other choice.
I have talked to a few ex-guerrilla men that left the FARC because they realized that all those ideals and promises they were given were nothing but a whole bunch of lies. So when you have these so called peace talks, it doesn't surprise me that the government does not believe in their promises. It has been tried before and some of Colombia had to live in fear wondering when the FARC would take over and kill them all.
It didn't work before and it won't work now.
Fart!
If there was a cease-fire why did FARC continue to ambush police and military, set off bombs, and kidnap. Perhaps their definition is different from the rest of the worlds. Santos is soft on FARC and has undone all of the gains make by Uribe in defeating these common criminals. Colombians want peace but not at any price.
FARC are nothing but thugs that make my country a very ugly place to live. they have infiltrated my hometown with their brand of thuggery and make it tough for ALL to live freely. My beautiful country does not need these thugs around. BEAT IT FARC!!!
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia. F A R C .
I hope this is just lost in translation, but R A F O C would make more sense.
Anyone able to translate their name so this makes more sense?
FARC is easier to say then RAFOC
The "war on drugs," and creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) by Nixon in 1973 has been used as a front to exterminate revolutionary movements in Latin America. The government Colombia
used Pablo Escobar to assassinate left wing political leaders, union chiefs, judges and journalist.
In the 1980's, a CIA agent, Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel Noriega allowed Pablo Escobar to ship cocaine through Panama working under the chief of the CIA George H.W. Bush. In October 1986 Reagan propriated $1.7 billion to fight the drug war. In 1989 George H.W. Bush created the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). That same year, Forbes magazine listed Pablo Escobar as the seventh-richest man in the world.
When Noriega refused to start skirmish with the Sandinistas, which would have given Reagan the excuse to invade Nicaragua, he was put in a black list, and later on put in prison by GHWBush in Miami for drug-trafficking.
Mean while to hide Pablo Escobar from the public eye he was put in his own luxurious prison 'La Catedral', guarded by the Colombian military and National Police, where he enjoyed the best prostitutes and orgies anybody with his money could afford, but he became a liability when the press reveled that he was still running drugs, so the CIA- Colombian Police had to get rid of him.
In 2002 Alvaro Uribe, a founder of the right wing paramilitary force AUC and colleague of Pablo Escobar, was elected president of Colombia with the mission to destroy the FARC, a personal agenda because the FARC had kill his father during a drug trafficking deal that went soured. In the process of the 'war on drugs' under the
auspices of, converted coke addict GWBush, all social activists who were looking for social transformation and thousand of innocent peasants disappeared in the hands of the military and paramilitary of Colombia.
Alvaro Uribe at the orders of commander in chief GWBush established 17 USA Military bases in Colombia, making Tolemaida the biggest. This USA military base housed a luxurious military prison for Colombian military criminals who has fielded death squads responsible for murdering thousands of Colombians. This
convicts came and left freely the luxurious prison built for soldiers convicted of civilian killings and other human rights crimes.
The Colombian military, the National Police, the Paramilitary and the drug cartels, the DEA and The CIA all
have been in bed involved in narco-trafficking and arms dealing at the highest levels.
That is your tax money at work in the 'War against Drugs'
Any claims to legitamacy FARC may have ever had disappeared long ago when they became a terroristic cult movement. FARC exploits the poor through violence and brainwashing. As Colombia as a country progesses in the modern age, FARC and their apologists would rather return to the dark days of anarchy and violence.
Why would you even argue with the dumb gringos? They don't even know the difference between their cocks and a gun. To them everyone that opposes totalitarian rule is a terrorist. They want to destroy our country and turn it into a religious theocracy ran by the Nucklehead Retard Association.