Colombia Congress ratifies peace accord with rebels

Bogota: After five decades of war, more than four years of negotiations and two signing ceremonies, Colombia’s Congress formally ratified a peace agreement allowing leftist rebels to enter politics. The 310-page revised accord was approved unanimously by the lower house on Thursday, 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.

President Juan Manuel Santos has said there won’t be a second referendum. 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. Other senators accused him of standing in the way of a peace deal that he pursued with the FARC as president in 2002-10. Santos says 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 UN monitors.