Colombia’s Santos warns FARC – We’ll come after your money

The agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, “is a contribution to world peace, ” President Juan Manuel Santos said. He added that, “today, we have reason for hope, because we have one less war in the world”.

Addressing the General Assembly on the International Day of Peace, Santos had earlier presented a copy of the agreement, wrapped in the Colombian flag, to the 15 members of the Security Council, who gave him a standing ovation.

FARC guerrillas gathered to approve the peace deal finalized last month with the Colombian government are holding their own version of Woodstock, an improvised music festival to celebrate what they hope will be the end of the Andean nation’s longstanding armed conflict.

Colombian peaceful agreement between the government and FARC should be approved by voters on October 2, that could bring an end to the half-a-century armed insurgency in the Latin America.

“Here is the product of this work in which we all helped, and it is a contribution to world peace, ” Santos said during the ceremony, which took place ahead of a Security Council session to discuss the situation in the Middle East.

According to Santos, “when I made a decision to take this step” to begin peace talks with the Colombian state’s oldest enemy “one of the first persons that I informed about my intentions was President Obama”.

The US president has supported the efforts in search of peace from the outset and told the Assembly that the agreement had been one of his government’s great achievements.

According to Obama, the peace deal, which still has to be approved by the Colombian people before taking effect, “ultimately will be good for the region, as well as the people of Colombia”.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Colombia for Monday’s signing of the peace deal in Cartagena.

The Marxist rebels have committed atrocities, including kidnappings and massacres, over 52 years of conflict that have led to the deaths of 220,000 people, with 25,000 disappeared, and 5.7 million displaced.

On the otherside of the divide, 23 former commanders of the now-demobilized paramilitary group Colombia United Self-defence (AUC), several of them imprisoned in the United States, said in a joint statement yesterday that they are backing the “yes” vote in the referendum, along with a request to be incorporated into the Special Tribunal for Peace that will be created to try those involved in the conflict.

“A new Colombia greets the global community today”, Santos said.

The end of the war would also halt the role of drugs in funding the rebellion, he added.

The substitution of illegal crops with legal crops will end the deforestation caused by planting coca, he said.