Colombia, FARC to make 'historic' peace announcement

Colombia's government and FARC rebels are expected to make what President Juan Manuel Santos called a "historic" announcement Wednesday on a peace deal to end their half-century civil war.

Sources close to the peace negotiations said there would be a major announcement in Cuba, where the two sides have been in talks for nearly four years.

Speaking in Colombia, Santos said negotiators were "putting the finishing touches" on a final peace accord.

"I hope to give the country historic and very important news today," he said.

Over the past few days, the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been discussing a range of unresolved topics, and worked late into the night Tuesday to draft a joint statement, sources from the two delegations told AFP in Havana.

However, officials contacted by AFP were unable to confirm whether the announcement will mark the conclusion of negotiations, which were initiated in late 2012 in the Cuban capital.

"We hope that it will be announced that the peace talks were successfully concluded," a member of the government negotiating team said, on condition of anonymity.

FARC leader Timoleon "Timochenko" Jimenez tweeted that negotiators were "at the threshold of important announcements to bring a final accord."

A smiling President Santos called it a "very special day," speaking to a group of children taking part in a government-sponsored art competition called "Paint a Colombia in Peace."

"May this country that you are imagining and painting become a reality," he said.

Once a peace deal is signed, the FARC will begin calling in its troops for disarmament at camps set up by the United Nations, which is helping monitor the ceasefire.

The deal must still be endorsed by Colombians in a referendum.

The war, which began in 1964, is the last major armed conflict in the Americas. It has killed 260,000 people, uprooted 6.8 million and left 45,000 missing.

Source: AFP