Colombia’s FARC Says More Time Needed to Hand over Weapons
The FARC guerrillas won’t meet a May 29 deadline to hand over their weapons under the terms of last year’s peace accord with the Colombian government, a rebel negotiator said on Friday.
Completing the disarmament process will require at least two additional months, Jesus Santrich told a press conference in Bogota.
As. the old joke goes, “the check is in the mail, I love you, and . . .”
But I digress.
The Marxist guerrilla will have an additional 20 days to hand over its weapons and an additional two months to reintegrate into society amid delays and foot-dragging:
Among the key problems is that shipping containers, where the weapons were to be stored, haven’t been installed at some of the camps. The government also said that hundreds of weapons caches identified by the guerrillas were in areas too remote to be reached by the deadline.
Santos downplayed the delays Monday, saying they were “nothing, if it means ending 53 years of conflict, violence and fratricide.”
Here’s Santos televised speech (in Spanish),
