Associated Press
LOS POZOS, Colombia — President Andres Pastrana ended the peace process Saturday, saying the eleventh-hour proposal from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia "is not sufficient."
"The proposal only refers to already agreed to issues," Pastrana said in a nationally broadcast address.
Pastrana gave the rebel army, known as FARC, 48 hours, beginning at 9:30 p.m. Saturday, to vacate the vast rebel safe haven he granted them three years ago as a condition for the peace talks.
Many feared the end of the peace talks could lead to an escalation in Colombia’s 38-year-old civil war. Roughly 3,500 people die every year in the violence, most of them civilians.
Colombia’s civil war pits FARC and a smaller rebel group against an illegal right-wing paramilitary force and government troops. The war is fueled by the drug trade, which the rebels and the paramilitaries both tax to finance their fight.
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