Daily Times

Colombia’s peace commissioner has met with leaders of a major dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in a possible step towards peace talks, both sides said in a published statement. Latin America’s most fearsome guerrilla group, FARC signed a peace deal with the state in 2016 to end more than half a century of armed conflict. But some guerrillas, unable to find a niche in civilian life, joined dissidents linked to the illegal trade in drugs and mining resources. Peace commissioner Danilo Rueda met with four high-ranking members of a holdout FARC group in the southern region of Caqueta, according to an undated joint statement published on Saturday in a local newspaper. “We have held an exploratory and rapprochement meeting to assess the possibility of initiating talks in the framework of total peace,” the statement said. The FARC members were identified in the statement as “Calarca Cordoba, Alonso 45, Ermes Tovar and Erika Castro.”