Colombian president open to talks with FARC leader

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says he is open to hold talks with the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in an effort to speed up the peace process.

Santos said on a local radio station on Tuesday that he is ready to hold talks with Rodrigo Londono, who uses the nom de guerre Timochenko.

“I think this is the most important process that Colombia can have and, if it’s successful, the most important thing that can happen to Colombia in recent history,” said Santos, referring to the talks hosted by Cuba.

“So if there’s a need at some point, for the process to be successful, that a meeting takes place, I won’t rule it out,” added the Colombian president.

On Sunday, a regional FARC commander was killed in an attack by the Colombian army.

Virgilio Antonio Vidal, also known as Silver, who was the commander of front 57 of the rebel group, was killed in an aerial bombardment of a FARC camp in Riosucio in the northwestern department of Choco.

The Colombian air force said on Monday that the slain commander had played an important role in drug and arms trafficking, kidnapping and murder.

“This individual was responsible for 70 percent of the kidnappings in (the northwestern department of) Antioquia. He orchestrated attacks on the population of Rio Sucio in Choco including launching a homemade explosive device against a police station in recent months,” said General Guillermo Leon, Colombia’s air force commander.

Late on Saturday, 14 Colombian soldiers and two rebels were also killed in a rural area in Arauca department’s town of Tame near Colombia’s northeastern border with Venezuela.

Talks between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government kicked off in Cuban capital Havana in November 2012. The talks recess and resume every few weeks as clashes between the two sides continue.

FARC is Latin America’s oldest insurgent group and has been fighting the government since 1964.

Bogota estimates that 600,000 people have been killed, and some three million others have been internally displaced by the fighting.

The rebel organization is thought to have around 8,000 fighters operating across a large swathe of the eastern jungles of the Andean nation.