Colombia and the country's second largest Marxist rebel group moved a step closer to negotiating the end to a brutal 41-year insurgency today by agreeing to work on an agenda for peace talks in January.
Leaders of the 5,000-strong National Liberation Army, or ELN, and negotiators from President Alvaro Uribe's government ended five days of what they termed "frank and cordial" exploratory talks in an optimistic mood.
They will meet again in Havana at the end of January to start thrashing out a peace agenda, they said in a joint statement issued in Havana, which is hosting the talks.
"We have been flying over the jungle looking for somewhere to land and finally a clearing appeared," Colombian peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo told reporters. "We landed to refuel for a second round of talks on specific issues."
Antonio Garcia, the second in command of the ELN military, said the Uribe government had understood the need to involve wider sections of society in a peace solution.
"This is the main achievement. We think this is the way ahead, a view shared by many sectors of Colombian society," Garcia said at a news conference.
Observers said the two sides are still very far from core negotiations that are sure to involve a government demand that the rebels stop kidnappings and cease all hostilities, and ELN demands for sweeping social, economic and political reforms.
"This was a necessary first step to build some confidence but the hard part is still to come," said German Espejo, an analyst at the Bogota think tank Seguridad y Democracia.
The preliminary talks opened on Friday. Colombia's Nobel prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and diplomats from Switzerland, Spain and Norway attended the talks to encourage agreement.