By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia will establish areas where members of four armed groups who have agreed to ceasefires can gather, another step in efforts to reach peace or surrender deals, the country’s defense minister and military said on Thursday.
President Gustavo Petro, a leftist and former member of a guerilla group, has promised to seek agreements with armed groups to end nearly a six-decade conflict that has killed at least 450,000 people in the Andean nation.
The ceasefires with the Clan del Golfo and the Sierra Nevada gangs and two dissident groups founded by ex-members of the FARC rebels who rejected a 2016 peace deal have led to significant reductions in violence during their first month, the government has said.
“There should come a concentration of these organizations,” Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez told journalists. “A territorial concentration which, on the one hand guarantees the possibility of effective control by the armed forces, and also to show that criminal activities are not continued.”
On Wednesday, Colombia’s government said it had made a deal with the Estado Mayor Central, one of the FARC dissident groups, that was meant to encourage further talks and which would see the group have areas for its units to gather.
The group, which has some 3,200 members, also pledged to avoid populated areas and main roads.
Similar protocols are being negotiated with Segunda Marquetalia, the other FARC dissident group, and the two crime gangs, whose members could receive benefits like reduced sentences for surrendering to authorities.
“A large part of the success of this work should be that groups look for locations to concentrate, where they will stop committing crimes and where we can carry out a protocol that will allow the laying down of arms,” said General Luis Mauricio Ospina, an army commander.
Troops will guard the outskirts of the areas to protect civilians and members of armed groups, said General Helder Fernan Giraldo, the commander of the armed forces.
Such areas have been used in previous peace processes with the FARC and paramilitary groups, many of whose members later joined crime gangs.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Paul Simao)
