Colombia’s congress ratifies peace accord with rebels

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA >> After five decades of war, more than four years of negotiations and two signing ceremonies, Colombia’s congress late Wednesday formally ratified a peace agreement allowing leftist rebels to enter politics.

The 310-page revised accord was approved unanimously by the lower house, which voted a day after the Senate approved the same text 75-0 following a protest walkout by the opposition led by former President Alvaro Uribe.

The accord introduces some 50 changes intended to assuage critics who led a campaign that saw Colombians narrowly reject the original accord in a referendum last month. Revisions range from a prohibition on foreign magistrates judging alleged crimes by government troops or by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to a commitment from the rebels to forfeit assets, some amassed through drug trafficking, to help compensate their victims.

But the FARC wouldn’t go along with the opposition’s strongest demands — jail sentences for rebel leaders behind atrocities and stricter limits on their future participation in politics.

“There needs to be a balance between peace and justice, but in this agreement there’s complete impunity,” Uribe, now a senator, said during Tuesday’s heated debate. Other senators accused him of standing in the way of a peace deal that he pursued with the FARC as president in 2002-10.

President Juan Manuel Santos said ratification will set in motion the start of a six-month process in which the FARC’s 8,000-plus guerrillas will concentrate in some 20 rural areas and turn over their weapons to United Nations monitors.

“Tomorrow a new era begins,” Santos said Tuesday, celebrating the Senate’s endorsement and the expected approval by the lower house.

But the rebels insist that their troops won’t start demobilizing until lawmakers pass an amnesty law freeing some 2,000 rebels in jail.

“D-Day starts after the first actions are implemented,” the rebel leader “Pastor Alape,” a member of the FARC’s 10-member secretariat, told foreign journalists last week after the new accord was signed. “The president unfortunately has been demonstrating an attitude that creates confusion in the country.”

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Opponents of peace agreements between rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, with the government gather outside the congress in Bogota, Colombia.