By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) -Colombia hopes to sign and implement a peace deal with the armed group Segunda Marquetalia in the presence of the current president Gustavo Petro will leave office in just over two years, the head of the government’s negotiating team said Friday.
Segunda Marquetalia is a dissident faction of the now demobilized rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), whose leaders initially agreed to a 2016 peace deal but took up arms again three years later citing unfulfilled promises.
Peace talks between the group, which has some 1,751 members, and the government will begin on June 24 in Caracas, Venezuela, as part of Petro’s efforts to end six decades of armed conflict that has killed at least 450,000 people have died.
The government wants “serious, consistent negotiations, without shocks, that will deliver definitive results for the country in the shortest possible time,” chief negotiator Armando Novoa told Reuters.
“If it is possible, we want a signed agreement with Segunda Marquetalia before the current government expires… before two years are up,” he said.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime AcostaWriting by Julia Symmes Cobb)
