Colombia, Rebels Sign Deal to End 50-year Conflict

　　哥伦比亚谋反者签订协议结束50年的矛盾斗争

　　Colombia and the country’s main rebel group have signed a peace deal aimed at ending more than 50 years of conflict in the South American nation.

　　Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the top rebel commander, known as Timochenko, met in the port city of Cartagena to sign the peace document.

　　Leaders from Latin America gathered for the event. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also attended.

　　Many rebel leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, were among more than 2,500 people witnessing the signing.

　　A long time in the making

　　The peace deal between FARC and the government took four years to negotiate. The sides agreed to the deal in June. The negotiations mainly took place in Havana, Cuba after starting in Oslo, Norway in 2012.

　　The signing, however, is not the final step.

　　The agreement must be approved in a referendum to be held on October 2. At least 13 percent of registered voters must take part in the referendum for it to be valid.

　　Public opinion studies show support for approving the agreement.

　　An end to the longest conflict in the Americas?

　　The conflict between Colombia’s government and FARC rebels has been long, complex and deadly. It has been blamed for more than 220,000 deaths and has displaced millions of people over half a century.

　　Ongoing fighting has hurt the country’s economy and limited foreign investment.

　　FARC started as a revolutionary movement of poor farmers in the mid-1960s. It was supported by Cuba and the former Soviet Union.

　　FARC funded its operations mainly through illegal trade in the drug cocaine. Much of those drugs went to the United States and Europe.

　　Former president Alvaro Uribe has criticized this month’s peace deal as givingamnesty to drug traffickers.

　　He said, “Colombians have learned over decades of attempted negotiations with other terrorist groups, it is that impunity always becomes the seed of new forms of violence.”

　　But the current president, Juan Manuel Santos, has argued that compromise was needed to get rebels to turn over their weapons.

　　Help for farmers, security in exchange for disarmament

　　Supporters of the deal say it calls for the government to work with coca farmers to get land titles. That part of the agreement addresses anger by small farmers about unequal land ownership.