Colombia, FARC announce deal for peace
Government must now sell pact to end long war to voters.
Colombia’s government and the largest rebel group in the country have reached a deal to end more than 50 years of conflict, the two sides announced Wednesday, paving the way for an end to the longest running war in the Americas.
For four years, the Colombian government and the rebels have been locked in negotiations to end the conflict. Time and again, they have emerged from the negotiating table to assure a weary public that another impasse had been eliminated, another hurdle cleared.
This time, the two sides declared that a final deal had been clinched.
The agreement effectively marks the end of the last major guerrilla struggle in Latin America.
It outlines a timetable in which the rebels, known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, will abandon their arms. It also sets out a pathway in which former fighters will enter civilian life again — and in some cases, run for office.
But to most Colombians, the deal is simply a promise that the war, which has lasted 52 years, claimed some 220,000 lives and displaced more than 5 million people, is at last coming to an end.
Peace in Colombia now looks more likely than ever, but a big hurdle still needs to be cleared before the deal is ratified.
President Juan Manuel Santos, who has staked his legacy on peace, must now sell the agreement to his people, who will be asked to vote in an up-or-down referendum on the deal.
Rallying against that approval stands Santos’ predecessor, former President Álvaro Uribe, whose term ended in 2010 with the FARC diminished.
Uribe is widely credited with the military gains that forced the rebels to the negotiating table. But he is now leading a growing campaign against the deal, saying it amounts to an unjust amnesty for the rebels.
“They will spend zero days in prison, they will be awarded with political representation,” Paloma Valencia, a senator in Uribe’s Democratic Center party, said of the rebels. “This deal breaks the rule of law.”
Still, others hailed the deal as a major step forward for a country of 50 million people.
The Obama WASHINGTON — administration said Wednesday it paid $1.3 billion in interest to Iran in January to resolve a decades-old dispute over an undelivered military sale, two days after flying $400 million in cash to Tehran.
State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau says the U.S. couldn’t say more about the Jan. 19 payments because of diplomatic sensitivities. They involved 13 separate payments of $99,999,999.99 and final payment of about $10 million. There was no explanation for the Treasury Department keeping the individual transactions under $100 million.
The money settles a dispute over a $400 million payment made in the 1970s by the U.S.-backed shah’s government for military equipment.
The equipment was never delivered because of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the shah and ended diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran.
On Jan. 17, the administration paid Iran the account’s $400 million principal in pallets of euros, Swiss francs and other foreign currency, raising questions about the unusual payment.
The $1.3 billion covers what Iran and the U.S. agreed would be the interest on the $400 million over the decades.
The deal has faced increased scrutiny since the administration’s acknowledgment this month that it used the money as leverage to ensure the release of four American prisoners. Republican critics accuse the administration of paying a “ransom.”
President Barack Obama and other officials deny such claims, though they’ve struggled to explain why the U.S. paid in cash.
Obama said it was because the United States and Iran didn’t have a banking relationship after years of nuclear-related sanctions, but that wouldn’t rule out using intermediary banks that maintain relationship with both.
The money came from a little-known fund administered by the Treasury Department for settling litigation claims.