The Colombian government on Wednesday stated that there is no deadline for the current peace talks, in spite of informal deadlines set by President Juan Manuel Santos.

A representative of the Office for the High Commissioner of Peace told Colombia Reports that “there is no set deadline for the ongoing peace talks with rebel group FARC.”

Santos originally set a deadline of November 2013 for an agreement to be reached with the guerrillas, stating that he wanted the process “to take months, rather than years.”

However, the delegations needed six months to reach an accord on land reform, which is the first of five points to be discussed before a peace deal can be signed, making the deadline increasingly hard to meet.

A preliminary accord on land reform was reached in May, a significant achievement considering that land reform is seen as the key to tackling the social and economic disparity that exists throughout Colombia, and the key reason behind the inception of the FARC in 1964.

The “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” nature of these talks however, renders this accord irrelevant unless the two parties can reach an agreement on the remaining topics.

These include the political participation of the rebel group, the practicalities of the end of the armed conflict, drug trafficking and the rights of the victims.

Sources