Government says peace deal must be reached before it will accept rebels’ demand that truce be verified by other countries

Colombia’s government has rebuffed a unilateral truce declared by the country’s largest rebel group, saying the guerrillas’ conditions are unacceptable until a peace deal is reached.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) said on Wednesday it would lay down its weapons for an unlimited time to bolster peace talks that have been held in Cuba for the past two years. But Latin America’s oldest and strongest insurgency said it would call off the ceasefire if its units were attacked by Colombia’s US-backed military, a condition that appears to doom the gesture due to the government’s longstanding refusal to enter a bilateral truce out of fear it would give the rebels an opportunity to re-arm.

President Juan Manuel Santos said he couldn’t accept the rebels’ demand that the truce be verified by several Latin American states and the International Red Cross, saying this would have to wait until a deal to end hostilities was reached. Still, he said he valued the rebels’ gesture as a way to begin de-escalating the half-century-old conflict that still claims hundreds of civilian lives every year and is fuelled by the smuggling of cocaine and other criminal activity.

It’s unclear where the government’s response leaves the ceasefire, which is set to take effect from midnight on Saturday.

Although the rebel army has declared temporary ceasefires before, around Christmas and elections, this is the first time since the 1980s it has offered to indefinitely lay down its weapons nationwide.

The announcement in Havana came on the same day that the Cuban and US governments announced they would restore diplomatic ties after five decades of US embargo, indicating major progress toward ending another cold war conflict. Analysts saw the timing as a coincidence.

“The Farc proposal responds to a totally different, Colombian, dynamic,” said Adam Isacson, of the Washington Office on Latin America thinktank.

Both sides having been trying to recommit themselves to talks that were almost derailed following the capture last month of an army general, the highest-ranking officer ever held by the Farc. Santos briefly suspended negotiations, but the crisis was overcome after the general was freed two weeks later.

The two sides have reached agreements on agrarian reform, political participation for the Farc and how to jointly combat illegal drugs. But some of the thorniest issues remain unresolved, including how the Farc would lay down its arms and whether commanders would face prosecution for atrocities and drug trafficking.

Thousands of Colombians marched over the weekend in major cities to reject any amnesty that would allow rebel leaders to escape justice.