"I remember sitting in the hall in Havana last June when the bilateral ceasefire was announced and the leader of the Farc delegation, Timochenko [Rodrigo Londoño], stood up and said 'this is the last day of the war'."
Former tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs Eamon Gilmore was present in Havana, on that and four other occasions, as the EU's special envoy to the peace process, "meeting with the negotiators from the government side and from the Farc side, the guarantors from the Cuban government and the Norwegian government".
And the war was over, more or less. Timochenko, commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) announced last Sunday that his fighters would cease hostilities with the government yesterday, ending 52 years of fighting.
On this week’s World View podcast, Gilmore talks about how the deal was reached and how it is designed to withstand backlash from those in Colombia who oppose it.
Overly generous
There are plenty of those unhappy with the deal, and what are seen as its overly generous terms for Farc members who committed violent acts. They will be granted a sort of amnesty that limits punishment to a “loss of liberty” in a non-prison setting and community service.
“That is for people who fess up. If they don’t do it within the time limit, they continue to be subject to the normal law. They can be prosecuted and if convicted they get the full whack.”
Gilmore says his experience dealing with the peace process in Northern Ireland came in useful when meeting victims of Farc violence in Colombia.
“It’s interesting to be able to talk with them about our experience of that, and to talk frankly about how uncomfortable people felt with those arrangements. But when you look at what is achieved, you bring the violence to an end. And that is a very big prize.”
Also on the podcast, Ruaidhrí Giblin reports from Iraqi Kurdistan, where an attack on the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul is imminent.
