The European Union has agreed to add Colombia's leftist FARC rebels to its blacklist of terrorist organisations when the bloc's foreign ministers meet on Monday, diplomats said today.
The 16,000-strong FARC, Colombia's biggest guerrilla army,
has been under consideration for some time for the blacklist, created after the September 11th attacks on the United States.
"The FARC was added to the terrorism list by EU ambassadors yesterday and the foreign ministers will approve it without debate on Monday," said an EU diplomat during a meeting of the bloc's justice and home affairs ministers in Luxembourg.
Colombia's has been pushing for the inclusion of FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, in the blacklist since it broke off peace talks in February.
EU countries can freeze assets of groups on the list, which already includes Colombia's right-wing paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC.
Colombia says the FARC has carried out more than 700 attacks in the past five months. Colombia's 38-year-old war, the longest in Latin America, has killed some 40,000 people in the past decade alone.