HAVANA -- Colombia's government and the country's biggest rebel group reached a deal Wednesday evening for ending a half-century of hostilities in what has been one of the world's longest-running armed conflicts.
President Juan Manuel Santos hailed the agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as an opportunity to turn the page on decades of political violence that has claimed more than 220,000 lives and driven more than 5 million people from their homes.
He said he would hold a referendum on Oct. 2 to give Colombians the chance to vote on the accord. Without their approval implementation can't begin.
In Colombia's capital, Bogota, some 400 people gathered in a plaza to watch on a giant screen the agreement being announced by negotiators in Havana who have been working around the clock in recent days to hammer out the final sensitive details left to the end of the four years of talks.
"We've won the most beautiful of all battles: the peace of Colombia," the chief rebel negotiator, Ivan Marquez, said at the announcement in Havana.
As soon as his speech finished, bringing the televised event to an end, the crowd on the plaza sang the national anthem and shouted "Viva Colombia! Yes to peace!"
"I can die in peace because finally I'll see my country without violence with a future for my children," said Orlando Guevara, 57, crying as white flags symbolizing peace waved behind him.
As congratulations poured in from the United Nations and other countries, U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed the deal. He said in a statement that the announcement was "a critical juncture in what will be a long process to fully implement a just and lasting peace agreement that can advance security and prosperity for the Colombian people."
The accord, whose final text has yet to be published, commits Colombia's government to carrying out aggressive updates to its land policies, overhauling its anti-narcotics strategy and greatly expanding the state into traditionally neglected areas of the country.
Negotiations began in November 2012 and were plagued by distrust built up during decades of war propaganda on both sides.
Polls say most Colombians loathe the guerrillas and show no hesitation labeling them "narco-terrorists" for their heavy involvement in Colombia's cocaine trade, an association for which members of the group's top leadership have been indicted in the U.S. Meanwhile, the rebels held on to a Cold War view of Colombia's political and economic establishment as "oligarchs" at the service of the U.S.
The rebel army was forced to the negotiating table after a decade of heavy battlefield losses that saw a succession of top rebel commanders killed by the U.S.-backed military and its ranks thinned by half to the current 7,000 troops.
Santos, an unlikely peacemaker given his role as architect of the military offensive, throughout maintained a steady pulse even as he was labeled a traitor by his conservative former allies and suffered a plunge in approval ratings.
The most contentious breakthrough came in September when the president traveled to Havana to lay out with rebel commander Rodrigo Londono a framework for investigating atrocities, punishing guerrillas for involvement in those abuses and offering compensation to victims.
Opponents of Santos and some human-rights groups harshly criticized a key part of that deal: Guerrillas who confess their crimes won't spend any time in prison and will instead be allowed to serve out reduced sentences of no more than eight years helping rebuild communities hit by the conflict.
Another toad to swallow, as Santos calls the concessions he's had to make, will be the sight of former rebel leaders occupying seats in the Congress specially reserved for the rebels' still unnamed political movement. The exact number of such seats was among the last details being hammered out in marathon 18-hour sessions taking place in recent days.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrea Rodriguez and Joshua Goodman of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/25/2016