BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian voters have rejected a peace deal with FARC rebels, a surprise outcome that risks prolonging a 52-year-old armed conflict, and in doing so tossed the peace process into chaos.

By a razor margin of 50.25 to 49.75 percent, voters rejected the peace deal, a Brexit-style backlash that few were expecting.

After nearly six years of negotiations, many handshakes and ceremonial signatures, Colombia’s half-century war is not over. Not even close.

Surveys had predicted an easy win for the “yes” vote by a margin of 2 to 1. Instead the result delivers a crushing blow to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who since 2011 has pursued the peace deal with single-minded determination and to the steady detriment of his own popularity. He took an extraordinary risk by insisting that the accord — the product of tedious, grinding negotiations with the FARC– would only be valid if Colombian voters gave their blessing.

They didn’t, and that failure has left Santos politically crippled. The president’s supporters began insisting that FARC leaders and government negotiators re-open the accord, but Santos had repeatedly warned Colombians that no such thing would be possible.

Sunday’s vote was also an extraordinary rejection of the guerrilla commanders of the FARC, who in recent months have tried to engineer a makeover of the rebels’ public image in preparation for an eventual return to politics. The outcome reveals the depths of Colombian public animosity toward the rebels, accumulated by decades of kidnappings, bombing and land seizures in the name of Marxist-Leninist revolution.

Sunday’s vote, for many Colombians, was about far more than a cease-fire with FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Many saw the country’s political and judicial integrity at stake, and the peace accord as a dubious giveaway to the rebels.

“I want peace, but not if it means kneeling down to the guerrillas,” said Bogota resident Piedad Ramos, 60. “Santos has divided and deceived the country.”

Gina Narvaez, 34, voted no because she wants the two sides to “take another look at some of the points of the accord.”

Her brother and her uncle were kidnapped by the FARC in the Huila department in the 1990s. They were freed only after a costly ransom payment.

“They need to change to accord so that there’s some kind of punishment for those who committed these crimes,” she said.

Voter turnout was lower than 40 percent, and heavy rains along Colombia’s Caribbean coast, one of the strongholds of president Santos, may have sapped support for the accord.

No one knows what will happen now with the nearly 5,800 fighters FARC fighters who were preparing to move into U.N.-monitored camps to begin laying down their weapons and start a transition to civilian life. They will presumably remain in their jungle hideouts, and a bilateral cease-fire between the rebels and the government is also now potentially in doubt.

By insisting on a deal that would allow them to avoid prison time in exchange for providing full and honest testimony to their war crimes, FARC’s leaders gambled that such an arrangement would be acceptable to Colombian voters. They were wrong.

The accord is not a surrender for the FARC, and includes other concessions to the rebels, including the guarantee of at least 10 seats in Colombia’s congress through 2026.

Colombians on both sides of the debate saw the significance of their vote Sunday in terms much bigger than the armed conflict itself.

At a base level, it was a clash between the two most powerful figures in Colombian politics: Santos and his arch-nemesis, conservative former president and senator Álvaro Uribe, who led the campaign against the peace deal.

The son of a wealthy Bogota publishing family, Santos is a figure from Colombia’s urban, globalized business elite, for whom the war with FARC has been a kind of anachronistic developmental constraint. They’re hoping the peace deal brings a new wave of foreign investment to Colombia, and increased trade.

Uribe, whose father, a cattle rancher, was killed by the guerrillas, represents the traditional Colombian landowners who bore the burnt of the FARC’s rural terror. They largely financed the paramilitary groups whose counter-insurgency campaign against the guerrillas and Colombian civilians produced the war’s worst violence. And their land disputes with rural farmers were at the origin of the conflict itself.

Now they will have to fight those battles with FARC– or whatever the name of its future political party may be– in the halls of Colombia’s congress.

Sunday’s outcome also amounts to a rare foreign policy win for the United States and the Obama administration, which has backed Santos and pledged to boost U.S. aid to Colombia by nearly 50 percent, to $450 million a year. Washington’s 16-year, $10 billion “Plan Colombia” security assistance package is widely credited with tipping the conflict in the Colombian government’s favor by weakening the FARC militarily and driving the rebels to seek a negotiated solution.

Voting got off to a slow start in the capital, but as the rain cleared voters began streaming into polling stations.

“I voted yes for the future of my children, so they won’t have to live in a country at war,” said Rocío Cano, 41, a schoolteacher. “Fifty years of violence is enough.”

A few voters Sunday who had suffered personally from the war said they were not ready to forgive the FARC– or at least not through an accord like this one.

“We all want peace, and I respect those who vote yes, but I can’t support this agreement,” said Jakelin Rueda, 33. “There’s no real justice in it.”

Rueda said her father was killed by the FARC in 2002 in the small town of Caparrapí north of the capital where she grew up. He was a farmer and community leader who opposed the guerrillas.

A lot of Colombian city-dwellers voted ‘yes” for “idealistic reasons,” Rueda said. “But they have not been affected by the violence directly.”

While FARC leaders did not formally campaign, the rebels made a major last-minute public relations push ahead of the vote. For the first time, rebel commanders have met with the families of victims at the sites of notorious FARC massacres, seeking forgiveness. On Saturday, the guerrillas volunteered to get an early start on disarmament, detonating about 1,400 pounds of explosives and other military ordnance in the presence of observers from the United Nations.

Most important, FARC leaders announced Saturday that they would make a formal declaration of their financial assets to make reparations to victims. The assets will include cash and property in areas of Colombia that the FARC has controlled for decades.

Until now the rebels insisted that they did not have money to contribute to the implementation of the peace accord, despite the widespread view here that FARC has socked away millions from drug-trafficking profits and other illicit sources.

“I want our country to be free,” said Nelson Gonzalez, 42, explaining why he voted to support the accord. Growing up in the Caquetá department of southern Colombia that has been a FARC stronghold for decades, Gonzalez lived in constant fear of guerrilla roadblocks, where motorists faced shakedowns, and the risk of being carjacked or kidnapped. There were places on the map that were simply no-go zones.

“I’d like to be able to travel around my country, at any hour, and not have to be afraid,” he said. “I just want to live in peace.”</s>To widespread dismay, Colombians voted on Sunday to reject an agreement that might have ended Latin America’s longest-running armed conflict—a decades-long insurgency that has taken more than 220,000 lives, displaced more than 10 percent of the country’s people and inflicted enormous economic damage.

The upset underlines the risks of government by referendum—as if further proof of those hazards were needed. The important questions for Colombia now are these: What went wrong, and what happens next?

Many Colombians apparently felt that the deal struck by President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels was too generous to the insurgents. Rather than punishing the widely detested group, the proposed agreement guaranteed it political representation.

Such concessions when conflicts are wound up are always hard to swallow, but are often the lesser evil—as in this case. The alternative to coming to terms with the rebels was not victory, but more years of violence. Colombia’s army has been capturing and killing FARC revolutionaries for half a century, yet the war has ground on. Despite some recent gains, a military end to the conflict was not in sight. Setting aside 10 seats out of 272 in Colombia’s parliament for two terms was an affordable price to pay for peace.

And it’s unclear, in fact, that most Colombians disagree. The turnout for the referendum was low—roughly two-thirds of the electorate stayed home—and the margin of victory for the No side was narrow. Hurricane Matthew didn’t help, depressing turnout in areas that had earlier helped Santos win reelection. Official complacency also played a part: Prereferendum signing ceremonies and hoopla featuring the likes of Bono, Ringo Starr and numerous heads of state may have led Colombians to think their votes didn’t matter.

The result is hard to read for another reason. The underlying politics is complicated—no simple matter of elite opinion clashing against populist anger, or of FARC’s victims on one side against the blithely unaffected on the other. The No voters included wealthy landowners, led by ex-President Alvaro Uribe, whose families and fortunes have suffered in the fighting and whose economic interests were threatened by the agreement’s provisions. At the same time, in some of the areas that had suffered the worst FARC massacres, the rural poor voted overwhelmingly for peace.

The fact remains, an agreement reached after four years of talks, with the widespread support of the international community, is now in limbo. Santos has reached out to leaders of the No campaign and ordered his negotiators back to Cuba, which hosted the talks and helped to broker the deal. For now, the FARC’s leaders have pledged to maintain a cease-fire. There’s hope the agreement can be modified and revived.

If so, the government would be wise to seek a way for the legislature to consider it without another popular vote. With or without another referendum, though, any revised agreement will need to be sold more effectively to a country paying closer attention.

Colombia has many other problems to address, from a burgeoning cocaine trade to a yawning budget deficit. Economic inequality, a forbidding geography, and the vast gap between those who live in the cities and the countryside all cry out for attention. Without a peace agreement, healing those divisions will be not just difficult but impossible.</s>But a return to combat may be a huge psychological challenge for ordinary rebel fighters, who have been preparing for the transition to civilian life and reuniting with their families. Many are exhausted or maimed by the war, and while the FARC's commanders are safe and comfortable in Cuba, ordinary fighters may be less willing to grind out a new battle of attrition.</s>BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombian voters rejected a peace deal with FARC rebels on Sunday, a surprise outcome that risks prolonging a 52-year-old armed conflict, and in doing so tossed the peace process into chaos.

By a razor margin of 50.25 percent to 49.75 percent, voters rejected the peace deal, a Brexit-style backlash that few were expecting.

After nearly six years of negotiations, many handshakes and ceremonial signatures, Colombia’s half-century war is not over. Not even close.

Surveys had predicted an easy win for the “yes” vote by a margin of 2-1. Instead the result delivers a crushing blow to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who since 2011 has pursued the peace deal with single-minded determination and to the steady detriment of his own popularity.

He took an extraordinary risk by insisting that the accord – the product of tedious, grinding negotiations with the FARC – would be valid only if Colombian voters gave their blessing.

They didn’t, and that failure has left Santos politically crippled. The president’s supporters began insisting that FARC leaders and government negotiators re-open the accord, but Santos had repeatedly warned Colombians that no such thing would be possible.

Sunday’s vote was also an extraordinary rejection of the guerrilla commanders of the FARC, who in recent months have tried to engineer a makeover of the rebels’ image in preparation for an eventual return to politics. The outcome reveals the depths of Colombian public animosity toward the rebels, accumulated by decades of kidnappings, bombings and land seizures in the name of Marxist-Leninist revolution.

Sunday’s vote, for many Colombians, was about far more than a cease-fire with FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Many saw the country’s political and judicial integrity at stake, and the peace accord as a dubious giveaway to the rebels.

“I want peace, but not if it means kneeling down to the guerrillas,” said Bogota resident Piedad Ramos, 60. “Santos has divided and deceived the country.”

Gina Narvaez, 34, voted “no” because she wants the two sides to “take another look at some of the points of the accord.”

Her brother and her uncle were kidnapped by the FARC in the Huila department in the 1990s. They were freed only after a costly ransom payment.

“They need to change to accord so that there’s some kind of punishment for those who committed these crimes,” she said.

Voter turnout was lower than 40 percent, and heavy rains along Colombia’s Caribbean coast, one of the strongholds of president Santos, might have sapped support for the accord.

No one knows what will happen now with the nearly 5,800 fighters FARC fighters who were preparing to move into U.N.-monitored camps to lay down their weapons and start a transition to civilian life. They will presumably remain in their jungle hideouts, and a bilateral cease-fire between the rebels and the government is also now in doubt.

By insisting on a deal that would allow them to avoid prison time in exchange for providing full and honest testimony to their war crimes, FARC’s leaders gambled that such an arrangement would be acceptable to Colombian voters. They were wrong.

The accord is not a surrender for the FARC, and includes other concessions to the rebels, including the guarantee of at least 10 seats in Colombia’s congress through 2026.

Colombians on both sides of the debate saw the significance of their vote in terms much bigger than the armed conflict itself.

At a base level, it was a clash between the two most powerful figures in Colombian politics: Santos and his arch-nemesis, conservative former president and senator Álvaro Uribe, who led the campaign against the peace deal.

The son of a wealthy Bogota publishing family, Santos is a figure from Colombia’s urban, globalized business elite, for whom the war with FARC has been a kind of anachronistic developmental constraint. They were hoping a peace deal would bring a new wave of foreign investment to Colombia, and increased trade.

Uribe, whose father, a cattle rancher, was killed by the guerrillas, represents the traditional Colombian landowners who bore the burnt of the FARC’s rural terror. They largely financed the paramilitary groups whose counterinsurgency campaign against the guerrillas and Colombian civilians produced the war’s worst violence. Their land disputes with farmers were at the origin of the conflict.

While FARC leaders did not formally campaign, the rebels made a major last-minute public relations push ahead of the vote. For the first time, rebel commanders met with the families of victims at the sites of notorious FARC massacres, seeking forgiveness.

Most important, FARC leaders announced Saturday they would make a formal declaration of their financial assets to make reparations to victims.</s>It could not have been closer: by a margin of half of 1% the people of Colombia have rejected a peace agreement that would have brought a formal end to 52 years of civil war and allowed the remaining 7,000 fighters of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) to re-integrate into the nation’s life and politics. With their votes, Colombians have highlighted the country’s profound geographic and political divisions and left Colombia, once again, on the edge of the unknown.

What President Juan Manuel Santos presented to the voters as a historic opportunity has turned into a political nightmare. It was a deal supported by everyone from Barack Obama to Pope Francis – although the conservative church leaders in Colombia had maintained a notable silence on the subject. Perhaps reassured by polls that predicted a comfortable win, the president’s administration, as one insider remarked last week, had no Plan B.

Why did a fraction more than half the voters, in a country blighted for the entire lives of most of its citizens by a war that has killed 250,000 and displaced 6 million, reject the offer of peace and the investment and prosperity that it might bring?

Colombia’s long history of violence and its tortured politics offer many possible explanations: Santos is not personally popular and by putting himself and the Farc commander in chief Timochenko front and centre of the agreement, and the lavish signing ceremony organised a week before the referendum, he alienated as many voters as he attracted. “If he had had the grace to step back and let the victims speak,” complained one Colombian commentator before the vote, “it would have been completely different. He would have held the moral high ground and people could have voted for peace without feeling they were being invited to support Santos.”

Repeated hints from supporters of the president that he and Timochenko were in line for a Nobel peace prize did not help. Why should a guerrilla leader with so much blood on his hands, people complained, be honoured with such a prize?

The far-right former president Alvaro Uribe, who retains strong support in his home base of Antioquia, campaigned vigorously for “no” for reasons of ideology as well as self-interest. Under Uribe’s presidency, killing by the army and the far-right militia escalated to new heights, as did the land grabs that fuelled much of the violence in that phase of the war. A national survey last year confirmed that nearly half of Colombia’s land is owned by 0.4% of the population, and even had the agreement passed, few of those who gained land through paramilitary violence were ready to hand it back.

In the days before the referendum, prospective voters in Medellin – a stronghold of Uribe’s – offered a range of reasons to vote no: that the Farc would be allowed to keep their ill-gotten gains. Firstly that once the ex-guerrillas entered politics, Colombia would end up with a leftwing dictatorship. Also that ordinary Colombians would have to pay for the deal while the men of violence reaped the gains of the peace, and finally that those with blood on their hands would not be punished for past crimes.

Other less polarising figures, like the conservative former president Andrés Pastrana, also supported a no vote, arguing that the agreement conceded too much to the Farc. Santos was wrong, he said, to frame it as a choice between peace and war: in this political argument, all sides claim to want peace. But for Pastrana, the choice was between this deal and a better one that he believed was possible. The Farc themselves, Pastrana insisted, had said that they would not return to arms in the event of a no vote.

It remains to be seen whether the Farc will finally put down their guns and accept less favourable terms: Colombia’s capacity for violence of both the far left and the far right is undiminished, and Timochenko’s authority has been shaken by this shock result, as Santos’s: Uribe’s party lost no time in calling for the president to step down.

In the minutes that followed the announcement of the final result, Timochenko promised on Twitter that he would continue to talk, and the Farc tweeted that “The love we feel in our hearts is gigantic and with our words and actions will be able to reach peace.”

Few Colombians will have been moved by this declaration of love from a movement with the Farc’s record of kidnapping and violence, despite some recent expressions of regret for the suffering of the victims. And infinite love aside, it would be no surprise if many of the Farc rank and file were to reach nervously for their weapons and return to their bases.

When a sober President Santos emerged to make a statement, three hours after the polls closed, he too insisted that the ceasefire remained in place and announced that he would convene all sides in the political argument to discuss a way forward. He went on to guarantee national stability, public order and the continued search for peace. Colombians on all sides of this bitter conflict have need of all three.</s>"The FARC reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future," Mr. Timochenko said after the result. "Count on us, peace will triumph."

Colombia's government and Marxist FARC guerrillas will scramble on Monday to revive a plan to end their 52-year war after voters rejected the hard-negotiated deal as too lenient on the rebels in a shock result that plunged the nation into uncertainty.

Putting on a brave face after a major political defeat, President Juan Manuel Santos offered hope to those who backed his four-year peace negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Cuba.

“I will not give up, I will keep seeking peace until the last minute of my term,” he said moments after losing Sunday's plebiscite to those who want a re-negotiation of the deal or an obliteration of the FARC on the battlefield.

Mr. Santos plans to meet all political parties on Monday and send lead government peace negotiator Humberto de la Calle back to Havana to speak to the FARC leadership.

Rodrigo Londono, the top FARC commander better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, also offered reassurance the rebels remain committed to becoming a peaceful political party.

“The FARC reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future,” Mr. Timochenko said after the result. “Count on us, peace will triumph.”

Mr. Santos (65), who was not obliged by law to hold a plebiscite, had said there was no Plan B for the failure of the peace vote, but now appears ready to consider options.

Colombians, even those who backed the “No” vote, expressed shock at the outcome and uncertainty about the future.

“We never thought this could happen,” said sociologist and "No” voter Mabel Castano (37). “Now I just hope the government, the opposition and the FARC come up with something intelligent that includes us all.”

The peace accord reached last month and signed a week ago offered the possibility that rebel fighters would hand in their weapons to the United Nations, confess their crimes and form a political party rooted in their Marxist ideology.

The FARC, which began as a peasant revolt in 1964, would have been able to compete in the 2018 presidential and legislative elections and have 10 unelected congressional seats guaranteed through 2026.

That enraged “No” supporters, including powerful former president Alvaro Uribe, who argued the rebels should serve jail terms and never be permitted to enter politics.

Mr. Uribe, a onetime ally who has become Mr. Santos' fiercest critic, may now hold the key to any potential re-negotiation.

While the FARC has refused to serve traditional jail terms, it may see no future in returning to the battlefields and so consider some sort of new deal.

“In the end, the people have spoken: the Colombian government and the FARC have no choice but to renegotiate,” said Peter Schechter, director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

The FARC already softened its stance in the original negotiation, publicly admitting for the first time it trafficked drugs, recruited minors and committed human rights violations, including massacres.

But voters worried the rebels would fail to turn over assets from drugs and illegal mining, potentially giving them a formidable war chest that could outstrip the coffers of traditional parties.

Regions still riven by the conflict, including poor areas along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, voted resoundingly in favor of the deal, but formerly violent interior areas pacified during the Uribe presidency largely backed the “no” camp.

“How sad. It seems Colombia has forgotten about the cruelty of war, our deaths, our injured, our mutilated, our victims and the suffering we've all lived through with this war,” said Adriana Rivera (43), a philosophy professor standing tearfully at the hotel of the “yes” campaign.

The vote may delay Mr. Santos' plans to move on to other matters including much-needed tax reform and other macroeconomic measures to offset a drop in oil income. It will also dent his hopes for a boom in foreign investment in mining, oil and agriculture in Latin America's fourth-largest economy.</s>No one wants war anymore, but the referendum rejecting the landmark agreement between the government and the FARC could push Colombia towards a fractious peace

Years of negotiation in Havana, Cuba, brought the government of Colombia to a peace deal with the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A 52-year civil war tore through this northernmost country of South America, taking at least a quarter of a million lives and displacing over six million people. No one was immune from the violence. Families had someone who had either been killed in the fighting or who wore the colours of the army, the FARC, or the right-wing paramilitaries. “In this house everything is ruin,” wrote the poet María Mercedes Carranza. “In this house we are burned alive.”

On September 26, the government and the FARC rebels signed an agreement based on the negotiations in Havana to end the war. The landmark accord would bring the FARC fighters out of the forest and into the political process. Crimes committed during the war — by all sides — would be forgiven in the name of peace. The government promised to set aside three million hectares to distribute to landless peasants and small landholders. The FARC would receive funds to help it become a political party, and the government promised to reserve seats in the Congress for it.

To ratify this agreement, the government agreed to hold a referendum on October 2. Few expected the turnout to be as low as it was — under 40 per cent, fewer than the percentage that came to the polls in 2014 to elect Colombia’s current President, Juan Manuel Santos — and for the vote to go against the peace agreement. The outcome was very close: 50.23 per cent voted no, and 49.76 per cent voted yes.

Polls showed that the ‘yes’ vote would win easily. The government, the FARC, the Catholic church and most civil society organisations backed the ‘yes’ vote. President Santos said he had bargained for the best deal possible.

The President had been the Defence Minister under the previous President, Álvaro Uribe, and had helped prosecute the war against the FARC and other guerrilla groups. Both Mr. Santos and Mr. Uribe knew about the crimes committed by their military. In 2008, Mr. Uribe dismissed 25 military officers, including three generals, for the assassination of young people who had been recruited in Bogotá’s slums. These officers had been trained at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the troops had been armed under the U.S. programme called Plan Colombia. Hundreds of extrajudicial killings had been admitted by Mr. Santos when he was Defence Minister. Reports emerged that the government had dispossessed, often at the barrel of a gun, mainly Afro-Colombians from the interior in order to facilitate the palm oil sector. This ‘ethnic cleansing’ had become normal from the government’s side.

In the lead-up to the referendum, the FARC leadership travelled across the country to apologise for crimes that their fighters had committed, massacres that they agreed had been unnecessary on political and military grounds. For instance, the FARC commander Ivan Marquez pointed to the 2002 Bojaya massacre of 119 civilians (48 of them children) and offered “an infinite apology”. This was one of many such incidents.

Mr. Uribe, now a Senator, campaigned viciously against the deal. He argued against allowing the FARC impunity for such massacres and mused about dealing a death blow by military means against the guerrilla group. His party and his allies suggested that the peace deal would deliver Colombia to the communists and to those who supported a progressive social agenda, including gay rights.

In Mr. Uribe’s hometown of Medellin, the leader of the ‘no’ campaign was Jhon Jairo Velásquez, the hit man of the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. These were the kinds of people who canvassed against the deal. It was a dirty campaign, vilifying President Santos for his ‘betrayal’ and calling the FARC “narco-terrorists” who needed to be eliminated. Anger that the deal had been negotiated seemingly without democratic oversight was fodder for some who instinctively would have recoiled against bringing the FARC above ground. Human Rights Watch’s Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco suggested that the deal should be disregarded because it gave immunity to the FARC rebels. This was context that moved the slim majority to vote against the accord.

Colombian activists who supported the deal say that the turnout was low for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most significant reason is the lack of enthusiasm about the peace agreement in the first place. Hurricane Matthew’s rush to the Colombian coastline certainly played a role in dampening turnout on the coast, where the ‘yes’ vote would have been strengthened. Places which had experienced the worst of the war — in the interior of the country — voted heavily for the agreement, while Medellin voted ‘no’. The town of Bojaya voted overwhelmingly (95.76 per cent) for the agreement. They knew what the vote would mean.

When the referendum’s result broke, Mr. Uribe took to the airwaves with a more conciliatory tone. He knew that he had found a seat at the table. No longer was his tone towards the FARC harsh. “We ask that there is no violence,” said the Senator, “that the FARC are protected and that they cease all crime, including drug trafficking and extortion.” It was important for Mr. Uribe to make the point that the vote was not against peace or for war, but that it was for a different kind of peace. He appears statesmanlike, even though his agenda is narrow.

Both President Santos and the FARC signalled quickly that the vote would not lead them back to war. The FARC’s leader Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, aka Timochenko, said that “peace would triumph”. He pledged that the FARC would “maintain its desire for peace” and would use “words as arms to build the future”. Mr. Santos called for an all-party discussion towards restarting the negotiation.

Mr. Uribe will play an oversize role in the new deliberations. He will seek to get more concessions from the FARC. Fighters of the FARC have been eager for the peace process to come into play. They are exhausted by the fighting and had wanted to return home. The morale of the FARC is low, but that does not mean that it would be willing to concede on questions of prosecution for its leadership and fighters.

Gloom prevails across the country. If the vote had gone the other way, Colombia might have shown the world that even intractable civil wars can come to an end. It would have been a message to Syria and to the Congo, a message of the power of negotiation towards a new civic compact. But this did not come to pass. Even as President Santos and the FARC leadership try to maintain their optimism of a deal, the return of Mr. Uribe suggests that Colombia might turn its back on a real peace.

Vijay Prashad teaches International Studies at Trinity College. He is the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books.</s>Colombia has rejected a peace deal with the Farc guerillas in a referendum - which some in Northern Ireland say is because it would have spared the rebels jail and guaranteed them ten seats in government.

The referendum on the government backed was narrowly defeated on Sunday by a razor-thin margin of 50.2%, delivering a major shock to the war-torn nation.

President Juan Manuel Santos said: “I won’t give up. I’ll continue search for peace until the last moment of my mandate.”

The Farc leader known as Timochenko said they were also committed to peace.

“The Farc reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future,” he told the BBC.

Colombians overwhelmingly loathe the Farc, which the US considers a terrorist group.

Many consider provisions in the accord that would spare the rebels jail time an insult to the 220,000 killed and almost eight million displaced by the long-running conflict.

In the past month the government has spent heavily on television ads, staged concerts and peace rallies around the country to get out the vote.

But turnout was only 38% - a sign to some analysts that Colombians’ enthusiasm for the ambitious accord was lacking.

Farc leaders travelled to areas where it committed massacres twice last week to discuss how they can compensate victims.

In October 2015 Sinn Fein MP Paul Maskey, DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson MP, SDLP MP Mark Durkan MP and Reverend Harold Good travelled to meet Farc and share lessons from Northern Ireland.

Mr Durkan said: “This is a deeply disappointing result and particularly frustrating when the parts of Colombia that have suffered most from this conflict voted overwhelmingly in favour of the peace deal.”

But victims campaigner Willie Frazer, who met Farc victims in Colombia several times, said people had suffered too much at the hands of Farc to support the deal.

Farc victims thought Northern Ireland had paid “too high a price” for peace, he said. They believed that justice here had been “forsaken” and that Farc would never change, he said. “That said, they also really wanted to see a peace agreement.”

He suggested that Farc victims be guaranteed the same number of seats in their government as Farc rebels and that any future referendum be required to each 70% threshold to pass.

TUV leader Jim Allister empathised with any people who “refuse to swallow the suspension of justice and the involvement of terrorists in politics”.

Links between Farc and the IRA are well known, he said, pointing to ‘The Colombia Three’.

“It would appear from this rejected deal that they [Farc] hoped to follow a similar path to Sinn Fein/IRA and present themselves as statesmen.”

Interestingly, he said, Farc offered to surrender assets in to compensate their victims of their terrorism – “something which the perpetrators of the Northern Bank robbery were never required to do, in spite of some comments about the return of ‘ill-gotten gains’”.

* Special courts would have been created to try crimes committed during the conflict.

* Those who confessed to their crimes would have been given more lenient sentences and would have avoided serving any time in conventional prisons.

* Demobilised Farc rebels would be paid a monthly stipend and those wanting to start a business would get financial help.

But “No” voters said this amounted to a reward for criminal behaviour. Many also said that they simply did not trust the rebels to keep their promise to lay down arms for good, as they had broken their word on this before.

Others said that Farc would be given an unfair electoral advantage under the deal in that it would be guaranteed 10 seats in the Colombian Congress elections in 2018 and 2022.</s>Colombians narrowly rejected a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas in a referendum on Sunday, plunging the nation into uncertainty and dashing President Juan Manuel Santos’ painstakingly negotiated plan to end the 52-year war.

The surprise victory for the “no” camp poured cold water on international joy, from the White House to the Vatican, at what had seemed to be the end of the longest-running conflict in the Americas.

The “no” camp won by 50.21 percent to 49.78 percent. Voter turnout was only 37 percent, perhaps partly owing to torrential rain through the country.

Both sides in the war immediately sought to reassure the world they would try to revive their peace plan.

Santos, 65, said a ceasefire already negotiated would remain in place, that he would sit down on Monday with the victorious “no” camp to discuss the way forward, and send his chief negotiator back to Cuba to meet with FARC rebel leaders.

“I will not give up, I will keep seeking peace until the last day of my term because that is the way to leave a better nation for our children,” said Santos, who cannot seek re-election when his second term ends in August 2018.

The commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, known by his nom de guerre, Timochenko, gave a similar message from Havana, where peace negotiations have taken place over the last four years.

“The FARC reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future,” said Timochenko, whose real name is Rodrigo Londono. “To the Colombian people who dream of peace, count on us, peace will triumph.”

Santos recently said a “no” vote would mean a return to war, and opinion polls had predicted he would win comfortably.

Traditionally conservative Colombian voters, in favor of peace in principle but unhappy at perceived soft treatment for the guerrillas, confounded those forecasts.

Opponents of the pact believed it was too lenient on the FARC rebels by allowing them to re-enter society, form a political party and escape jail sentences.

“I voted no. I don’t want to teach my children that everything can be forgiven,” said Bogota engineer Alejandro Jaramillo, 35.

Opponents want a renegotiation of the deal with rebel leaders serving jail time and receiving no free seats in Congress.

“This is a clear message. .. I ask all citizens to trust we will know how to handle this situation without agitation. We’ll work with the government to remake this accord,” said former Vice President Francisco Santos, a prominent “no” supporter.

“No” voters appeared more highly motivated, and some Colombians may have felt pressured to tell pollsters they were voting for peace despite private doubts.

Regions still riven by the conflict, including poor areas along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, voted resoundingly in favor of the deal, but formerly violent interior regions pacified during the presidency of former leader Alvaro Uribe backed the “no” camp.

Uribe, still an influential figure in Colombia with a large following, led the “no” camp and the result was a huge victory for him.

The rebels, whose numbers were halved to about 7,000 in recent years because of a U.S.-backed military offensive, had agreed to turn in weapons and fight for power at the ballot box instead.

Under the accord, the FARC, which began as a peasant revolt in 1964, would have been able to compete in the 2018 presidential and legislative elections and have 10 unelected congressional seats guaranteed through 2026.

It would also have given up its role in the lucrative illegal drug trade and taken part in reforming rural Colombia.

But controversially, many rebel leaders who ordered killings, bombings and displacements would have had to appear before a special tribunal that could sentence them to alternative punishments like clearing landmines.

For decades, the FARC bankrolled the longest-running conflict in the Americas through the illegal drug trade, kidnapping and extortion.

Battles between the guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug gangs and the army raged in the countryside and there were atrocities committed on all sides.

The conflict took more than 220,000 lives and displaced millions of people. At one stage, the FARC was positioned close to the capital and the state was on the verge of collapse.

Supporters of the peace deal were stunned by the plebiscite result.

“How sad. It seems Colombia has forgotten about the cruelty of war, our deaths, our injured, our mutilated, our victims and the suffering we’ve all lived through with this war,” said Adriana Rivera, 43, a philosophy professor standing tearfully at the hotel of the “yes” campaign.

The vote was a disaster for Santos, who had hoped to turn his focus quickly to other matters including possible talks with the smaller ELN rebel group, a much-needed tax reform and other economic measures to compensate for a drop in oil income.

The government had hoped peace would lead to a boom in investment by commodities investors, in gold mines, oil and agriculture in Latin America’s fourth-largest economy.

After Sunday’s vote, companies will be rethinking the situation.

Although the “no” camp has broached the idea of fresh talks, the FARC has said no group sits at a negotiating table to agree to jail time.

“Today will be remembered by history as the moment Colombia turned its back on what could have been the end of a war that for more than 50 years devastated millions of lives,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director for rights group Amnesty International. “Even though it was imperfect, the accord was a sure path to peace and justice.” – Reuters</s>Putting on a brave face after a major political defeat, President Juan Manuel Santos offered hope to those who backed his four-year peace negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Cuba.

"I will not give up, I will keep seeking peace until the last minute of my term," he said moments after losing Sunday's plebiscite to those who want a re-negotiation of the deal or an obliteration of the FARC on the battlefield.

Santos plans to meet all political parties on Monday and send lead government peace negotiator Humberto de la Calle back to Havana to speak to the FARC leadership.

Rodrigo Londono, the top FARC commander better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, also offered reassurance the rebels remain committed to becoming a peaceful political party.

"The FARC reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future," Timochenko said after the result. "Count on us, peace will triumph."

Santos, 65, who was not obliged by law to hold a plebiscite, had said there was no Plan B for the failure of the peace vote, but now appears ready to consider options.

Colombians, even those who backed the "No" vote, expressed shock at the outcome and uncertainty about the future.

"We never thought this could happen," said sociologist and "No" voter Mabel Castano, 37. "Now I just hope the government, the opposition and the FARC come up with something intelligent that includes us all."

The peace accord reached last month and signed a week ago offered the possibility that rebel fighters would hand in their weapons to the United Nations, confess their crimes and form a political party rooted in their Marxist ideology.

The FARC, which began as a peasant revolt in 1964, would have been able to compete in the 2018 presidential and legislative elections and have 10 unelected congressional seats guaranteed through 2026.

That enraged "No" supporters, including powerful former president Alvaro Uribe, who argued the rebels should serve jail terms and never be permitted to enter politics.

Uribe, a onetime ally who has become Santos' fiercest critic, may now hold the key to any potential re-negotiation.

While the FARC has refused to serve traditional jail terms, it may see no future in returning to the battlefields and so consider some sort of new deal.

"In the end, the people have spoken: the Colombian government and the FARC have no choice but to renegotiate," said Peter Schechter, director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

The FARC already softened its stance in the original negotiation, publicly admitting for the first time it trafficked drugs, recruited minors and committed human rights violations, including massacres.

But voters worried the rebels would fail to turn over assets from drugs and illegal mining, potentially giving them a formidable war chest that could outstrip the coffers of traditional parties.

Regions still riven by the conflict, including poor areas along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, voted resoundingly in favor of the deal, but formerly violent interior areas pacified during the Uribe presidency largely backed the "no" camp.

"How sad. It seems Colombia has forgotten about the cruelty of war, our deaths, our injured, our mutilated, our victims and the suffering we've all lived through with this war," said Adriana Rivera, 43, a philosophy professor standing tearfully at the hotel of the "yes" campaign.

The vote may delay Santos' plans to move on to other matters including much-needed tax reform and other macroeconomic measures to offset a drop in oil income. It will also dent his hopes for a boom in foreign investment in mining, oil and agriculture in Latin America's fourth-largest economy.
FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño (Timoleón) says his troops will honor its commitments to the Colombian government, including the permanent cease-fire, despite voters rejection of the peace accord in Sunday's referendum. President Juan Manuel Santos calls the country's political parties to an emergency meeting.