Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force formally completed its disarmament process on Monday to end half a century of war against the state, the United Nations said.

UN monitors "today have the entirety of the FARC's registered individual arms stored away," except for some that were exempted for transitional security at demobilisation camps, the UN said in a statement.

The disarmament by the roughly 7,000 members of Colombia's biggest rebel group under a 2016 peace accord brings Latin America's oldest civil conflict close to a complete end.

FARC leader Rodrigo Londono is scheduled to formally conclude the disarmament process at a ceremony with President Juan Manuel Santos in the central town of Mesetas at 1500 GMT on Tuesday.

READ MORE: Inside an endangered peace community in Colombia

The UN's statement said it had received 7,132 weapons belonging to the rebel fighters, excluding "those that under the roadmap will be used for security in the 26 camps" until August 1.

Separately, the UN mission is continuing to extract and destroy other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have identified and surrendered to the monitors.

The former fighters are now due to make the transition into civilian life. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will transform into a political party.

The accord, first signed in November, was initially narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum before being redrafted and pushed through congress.

Critics said it was too lenient on FARC members, some of whom will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes during the conflict.

The move is a key part of efforts to end the conflict completely.

The last major active rebel force, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has started talks with the government in Bogota but has been blamed for continuing confrontations with state forces.

The ELN kidnapped two Dutch journalists on June 19 and freed them five days later.

Officials say remnants of right-wing paramilitary groups are also fighting the ELN in rural areas for control of the drug trade that has fueled the conflict.

OPINION: Why Colombians opposed the peace deal with FARC

Three women were killed in a bombing at a crowded shopping centre in Bogota on June 17. The bombing was blamed on a fringe group, the Revolutionary People's Movement (MRP).

Colombia's civil conflict erupted in 1964 over land rights. It drew in leftist armed groups, right-wing paramilitary groups and state forces.

It has left 260,000 people confirmed dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.</s>Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, build a stage for the next day's ceremony that will commemorate the completion of the rebels' disarmament process, at the Mariana Paez demobilization zone, one of many rural camps where rebel fighters are making their transition to civilian life, in Buenavista, Colombia, Monday, June 26, 2017. (Photo | AP)

BOGOTA: Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force formally completed its disarmament process on Monday to end half a century of war against the state, the United Nations said.

UN monitors "today have the entirety of the FARC's registered individual arms stored away," except for some that were exempted for transitional security at demobilisation camps, the body said in a statement.

The disarmament by the roughly 7,000 members of Colombia's biggest rebel group under a 2016 peace accord brings Latin America's oldest civil conflict close to a complete end.

FARC leader Rodrigo Londono is scheduled to formally conclude the disarmament process at a ceremony with President Juan Manuel Santos in the central town of Mesetas at 1500 GMT on Tuesday.

The UN statement said the FARC had handed over all of its more than 7,000 weapons, excluding "those that under the roadmap will be used for security in the 26 camps" until August 1.

Separately, the UN mission is continuing to extract and destroy other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have identified and surrendered to the monitors.

The former fighters are now due to make the transition into civilian life. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will transform into a political party.

The accord, first signed in November, was initially narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum before being redrafted and pushed through congress.

Critics said it was too lenient on FARC members, some of whom will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes in the conflict.

The move is a key part of efforts to end the conflict completely.

The last active rebel force, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has started talks with the government in Bogota, but has been blamed for continuing confrontations with state forces.</s>BOGOTA: Colombia’s leftist FARC rebel force celebrates its disarmament on Tuesday after half a century of war against the state, ending Latin America’s oldest civil conflict.

FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, alias Timochenko, is scheduled to formally conclude the disarmament process at a ceremony with President Juan Manuel Santos in the central town of Mesetas at 1500 GMT.

Part of a 2016 peace deal with the FARC, the move is a key part of efforts to end the conflict. But the process has been blighted by ongoing violence involving other armed groups in recent weeks.

United Nations monitors said they “have the entirety of the FARC’s registered individual arms stored away,” except for some that were exempted for transitional security at demobilization camps until August 1.

Separately, the UN mission is continuing to extract and destroy other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have identified and surrendered to the monitors.

Londono called the disarmament “a historic moment for Colombia,” ahead of Monday’s UN announcement.

“The laying down of arms is an act of will, courage and hope,” he wrote on Twitter.

Santos said last week that the event “changes the history of Colombia.”

“The FARC, the most powerful and oldest guerrilla force in Latin America, will cease to exist,” he said in a speech in Paris.

The former fighters are now due to make the transition into civilian life. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will transform into a political party.

Weapons “fulfilled a function at one time, but today we are making a political decision and we no longer need them,” senior FARC commander Mauricio Jaramillo told Agence France-Presse.

The accord, first signed in November, was initially narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum before being redrafted and pushed through congress.

Critics such as conservative political leader Alvaro Uribe said it was too lenient on FARC members, some of whom will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes committed during the conflict.

Colombia’s civil conflict erupted in 1964 over land rights. It drew in leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and state forces.

It has left 260,000 people confirmed dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.

Santos says he wants to seal a “complete peace” by reaching a deal with the country’s last active rebel group, the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN).</s>BOGOTA: Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force formally completed its disarmament process on Monday (Jun 26) to end half a century of war against the state, the United Nations said.

UN monitors "today stored away the entirety of the FARC's registered individual arms," except for some that were exempted for transitional security at demobilisation camps, the body said in a statement.

The disarmament by the roughly 7,000 members of Colombia's biggest rebel group under a 2016 peace accord brings Latin America's oldest civil conflict close to a complete end.

But the process has been blighted by ongoing violence involving other groups.

FARC leader Rodrigo Londono is scheduled to formally conclude the disarmament process at a ceremony with President Juan Manuel Santos in the central town of Mesetas at 1500 GMT on Tuesday.

The UN statement said the FARC had handed over all of its more than 7,000 weapons, excluding "those that under the roadmap will be used for security in the 26 camps" until Aug 1.

Separately, the UN mission is continuing to extract and destroy other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have identified and surrendered to the monitors.

Londono called the disarmament "a historic moment for Colombia," ahead of Monday's UN announcement. "The laying down of arms is an act of will, courage and hope," he wrote on Twitter.

Santos said last week that the event "changes the history of Colombia." "The FARC, the most powerful and oldest guerrilla force in Latin America, will cease to exist," he said in a speech in Paris.

The former fighters are now due to make the transition into civilian life. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will transform into a political party.

Weapons "fulfilled a function at one time, but today we are making a political decision and we no longer need them," senior FARC commander Mauricio Jaramillo told AFP.

The accord, first signed in November, was initially narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum before being redrafted and pushed through congress.

Critics said it was too lenient on FARC members, some of whom will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes in the conflict.

Colombia's civil conflict erupted in 1964 over land rights. It drew in leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and state forces.

It has left 260,000 people confirmed dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.

Santos says he wants to seal a "complete peace" by reaching a deal with the country's last active rebel group, the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN).

The ELN started talks with the government this year, though it has been blamed for ongoing confrontations with state forces.

It kidnapped two Dutch journalists on Jun 19 and freed them five days later.

Officials say remnants of right-wing paramilitary groups are also fighting the ELN in rural areas for control of the drug trade that has fuelled the conflict.

Three women were killed in a bombing at a crowded shopping center in Bogota on Jun 17. That was blamed on a fringe extremist group, the Revolutionary People's Movement (MRP).</s>53 years after its first combat, Colombia’s oldest and largest rebel group, the FARC, have completed its disarmament process, the United Nations announced Monday.

According to the United Nations, the FARC’s approximately 7,000 demobilized guerrillas have surrendered 7,132 arms.

The weapons are now stored in UN-controlled containers located in the 26 demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) camps where the guerrillas where the guerrillas have been staying since September last year.

President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, known by his nom-de-guerre “Timochenko” are expected to attend a ceremony on Tuesday to celebrate the successful disarmament of the country’s longest-living guerrilla group.

The only weapons left in hands of FARC members are those in the hands of guards maintaining security in these camps. Also these weapons should be surrendered to the UN before the agreed deadline of August 1.

All other guerrillas that have handed in their weapons have received certificates, allowing them to take part in reintegration programs.

Apart from the disarmament of the guerrillas, the UN, the FARC and state forces have removed or detonated 77 of approximately 900 weapons caches hidden in the jungles and mountains of Colombia where the FARC used to be active, the international organization said.

Some 1,600 FARC militia members, not all of whom were armed, have also reported at the camp to receive a certificate they are now no longer a member of an illegal armed group.

Guerrillas who have deserted or militias members who have failed to report themselves will no longer be able to take part in the peace process and will be targeted by the Colombian security forces.

Of the FARC’s approximately 50 fronts, six have refused to take part in the peace process. The dissident groups are primarily active in the coca-rich south and southwest of the country.

These are the FARC dissident groups Colombia’s authorities must confront

With the full disarmament of the FARC’s guerrillas, Colombia’s peace process has successfully finished a historic phase of the country’s ongoing peace process that seeks an and to more than half a century of political violence that has left more than 265,000 Colombians dead, tens of thousands missing and 7 million displaced.

The peace process has been plagued by a number of delays, partly due to government failures to timely facilitate the disarmament and disinformation campaigns by the country’s hard-right opposition, which — like the FARC — is expected to respond for tens of thousands of human rights violations.

Additionally, the process has been stained by the ongoing assassination of social leaders and members of FARC members, and an apparent spoiler attack on a Bogota mall little over a week ago.

The following phase of the peace process includes a transitional justice tribunal that will call an unknown number of FARC guerrillas and militia members, 24,500 state officials and almost 13,000 private individuals and companies to respond for the tens of thousands of war crimes committed by the multiple parties during the armed conflict.

was last modified: by</s>Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force celebrates its disarmament on Tuesday after half a century of war against the state, ending Latin America's oldest civil conflict.

FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, alias Timochenko, is scheduled to formally conclude the disarmament process at a ceremony with President Juan Manuel Santos in the central town of Mesetas at 1500 GMT.

Part of a 2016 peace deal with the FARC, the move is a key part of efforts to end the conflict. But the process has been blighted by ongoing violence involving other armed groups in recent weeks.

United Nations monitors said they "have the entirety of the FARC's registered individual arms stored away," except for some that were exempted for transitional security at demobilization camps until August 1.

Separately, the U.N. mission is continuing to extract and destroy other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have identified and surrendered to the monitors.

Londono called the disarmament "a historic moment for Colombia," ahead of Monday's U.N. announcement.

"The laying down of arms is an act of will, courage and hope," he wrote on Twitter.

Santos said last week that the event "changes the history of Colombia."

"The FARC, the most powerful and oldest guerrilla force in Latin America, will cease to exist," he said in a speech in Paris.

The former fighters are now due to make the transition into civilian life. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will transform into a political party.

Weapons "fulfilled a function at one time, but today we are making a political decision and we no longer need them," senior FARC commander Mauricio Jaramillo told AFP.

The accord, first signed in November, was initially narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum before being redrafted and pushed through congress.

Critics such as conservative political leader Alvaro Uribe said it was too lenient on FARC members, some of whom will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes committed during the conflict.

Colombia's civil conflict erupted in 1964 over land rights. It drew in leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and state forces.

It has left 260,000 people confirmed dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.

Santos says he wants to seal a "complete peace" by reaching a deal with the country's last active rebel group, the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN).

The ELN started talks with the government in February, but has been blamed for ongoing confrontations with state forces.

The ELN kidnapped two Dutch journalists on June 19 and freed them five days later.

Officials say remnants of right-wing paramilitary groups are also fighting the ELN in rural areas for control of the drug trade that has fueled the conflict.

Three women were killed in a bombing at a crowded shopping center in Bogota on June 17. That was blamed on a fringe extremist group, the Revolutionary People's Movement (MRP).</s>A rebel of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, stands guard at the Mariana Paez demobilization zone, one of many rural camps where rebel fighters are making their transition to civilian life, in Buenavista, in the municipality of Mesetas, Colombia. (Photo | AP)

MESETAS: The leader of Colombia's leftist FARC rebels formally declared the force's historic disarmament complete on Tuesday at a ceremony to mark the end of the UN-supervised process.

"Today, we are not letting Colombia down. Today, we are laying down our weapons," said commander Rodrigo Londono, alias Timochenko, in a speech in the central town of Mesetas, site of one of the group's demobilization camps.

"Farewell to arms, welcome to peace!"

The move, part of a 2016 peace deal, is a key part of efforts to end the long territorial and ideological conflict.

But the process has been blighted by ongoing violence involving other armed groups in recent weeks.

United Nations monitors said on Monday they "have the entirety of the FARC's registered individual arms stored away."

That excluded some arms that were exempted for transitional security at demobilization camps until August 1.

Separately, the UN mission is continuing to extract and destroy other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have identified and surrendered to the monitors.

The former fighters are now due to make the transition into civilian life. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will transform into a political party after a congress in August.

The peace accord, first signed in November, was at first narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum before it was redrafted and pushed through congress.

Critics such as conservative political leader Alvaro Uribe said it was too lenient on FARC members, some of whom will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes committed during the conflict.

The FARC launched its uprising in 1964 over land rights for poor rural communities.

The conflict drew in leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and state forces.

It has left 260,000 people confirmed dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.</s>MESETAS, Colombia: Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force declared its disarmament complete on Tuesday (Jun 27) after half a century of war against the state, bringing Latin America's oldest civil conflict close to an end.

"Farewell to war. Farewell to arms, welcome to peace!" said commander Rodrigo Londono, alias Timochenko, in a speech in the central town of Mesetas, site of one of the group's demobilisation camps.

"Today, we are not letting Colombia down. Today, we are laying down our weapons."

The move is a key part of efforts to end the long territorial and ideological conflict under a 2016 peace accord.

The accord was at first narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum last year before it was redrafted and pushed through congress.

Since then, the process has been blighted by ongoing violence involving other armed groups.

United Nations monitors said on Monday they "have the entirety of the FARC's registered individual arms stored away."

That excluded some arms that were exempted for transitional security at rebel demobilisation camps until Aug 1.

Separately, the UN mission is destroying other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have surrendered to the monitors.

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping forge the accord, said "the peace is real and irreversible," in a speech following Timochenko's.

"Today ... is a special day that we will never forget, the day when we swapped weapons for words," he said. "The laying down of arms is a symbol of the new country that we can be."

The former fighters are now due to make the transition into civilian life. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will transform into a political party after a congress in August.

Critics such as conservative political leader Alvaro Uribe said the peace accord was too lenient on FARC members.

Some of them will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes committed during the conflict.

The FARC and the government have promised to stamp out the drug production that has fueled the conflict.

The state promised to develop alternative sources of revenue for growers of coca, the raw ingredient of cocaine.

The FARC launched its uprising in 1964 to fight for land rights and protection for poor rural communities.

The conflict drew in leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and state forces.

It has left 260,000 people confirmed dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.

The FARC has pledged to use its assets to compensate victims.

The accord promises land and credit lines for rural communities, with millions of dollars of investment.

"It marks the end of the main guerrilla group in the western hemisphere," said Jorge Restrepo, director of the conflict analysis centre CERAC.

"It marks the beginning of the post-conflict period ... and of a difficult process of reconciliation in the country."

Santos says he wants to seal a "complete peace" by reaching a deal with the country's last active rebel group, the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), which has some 1,500 members.

The ELN started talks with the government in February, but has been blamed for ongoing confrontations with state forces.

It kidnapped two Dutch journalists on Jun 19 and freed them five days later.

Officials say remnants of right-wing paramilitary groups are also fighting the ELN for control of the drug trade.

Three women were killed in a bombing at a crowded shopping center in Bogota on Jun 17. That was blamed on a fringe extremist group, the Revolutionary People's Movement (MRP).</s>Colombia reached a major milestone on its road to peace Tuesday as leftist rebels relinquished some of their last weapons and declared an end to their half-century insurgency.

The historic step was taken as President Juan Manuel Santos traveled to a demobilization camp in Colombia's eastern jungles to join guerrilla leaders as they begin their transition to civilian life.

In a short, symbol-filled ceremony, United Nations observers shut and padlocked the last containers storing some of the 7,132 weapons that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have turned over the past few weeks at 26 camps across the country. Yellow butterflies were released and an AK-47 converted into an electric guitar rang out plaintive chords in honor of the long conflict's victims.

"By depositing the weapons in the U.N. containers, the Colombians and the entire world know that our peace is real and irreversible," Santos, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, told an audience of former rebel fighters dressed in white shirts with cuffed hands shaped in a heart and a Spanish hashtag reading, "Our only weapons are words."

Though hundreds of FARC caches filled with larger weapons and explosives are still being cleared out, the U.N. on Monday certified that all individual firearms and weapons, except for a small number needed to safeguard the soon-to-disband camps, have been collected.

"In a world convulsed by old and new forms of violence, by conflicts whose protagonists appear irreconcilable ... a successful process constructing peace in Colombia is also reason for hope and a powerful example for the international community," said Jean Arnault, head of the U.N. peace mission in Colombia.

The day put Colombia one step closer to turning a page on Latin America's longest-running conflict, which caused at least 250,000 deaths, left 60,000 people missing and displaced more than 7 million.

After years of thorny negotiations, the rebels reached an agreement with the government last year to give up their weapons and transition into a political party. But implementing the accord has been slow. The initial deal was narrowly rejected in a national referendum, congress has struggled to pass laws implementing the revised accord, and opposition lawmakers are threatening to overturn key aspects of the agreement if they win the presidential election next year.

Rodrigo Londono, the FARC's top commander, complained about the bureaucratic, legal and political "traps" in a sternly worded speech in which he called on the government to live up to its end of the bargain and not simply rejoice at seeing its former combat enemies disarmed.

He questioned why imprisoned rebels who were amnestied six months ago remain in jail and complained about the state of the Mariana Paez demobilization camp where the ceremony was taking place. It was supposed to contain concrete housing units with running water, kitchens and electricity, but instead has been likened to a refugee camp with rebels living under plastic tarps.

"The state of infrastructure in this rural zone is the best testimony of the slow pace in which the national government is fulfilling what we agreed to," Londono said.

Still, he and other rebels showed no outward sign of regretting their decision to abandon the battlefield.

Stefanía Rodriguez joined the guerrillas a decade ago at age 13. She said she wanted an education that her poor family couldn't provide. Her weapon, nicknamed Tasmania after the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character, was a constant companion to the point she would sleep with it during difficult missions.

"It was like our other half," she said.

Handing it over was like losing part of herself, she said. But with the prospect of peace, she has been reunited with her mother, who she hadn't seen in seven years, and now plans to study engineering.

"It's time to silence the weapons that because of the conflict caused so much damage to Colombia," she said.

Conservative opponents of the peace deal, led by former President Alvaro Uribe, have questioned whether the FARC movement has turned over its entire arsenal. But experts at Notre Dame University's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies say the one-gun per fighter ratio seen in Colombia could be one of the highest in the world, far greater than the levels of disarmament seen in recent guerrilla conflicts from Guatemala to Nepal.

Aldo Civico, a Colombia expert at Rutgers University, said doubt over the exact number of weapons turned in ultimately doesn't matter in measuring disarmament's success.

"There's always a question mark," he said. "What's more important is we are witnessing step after step the willingness of the FARC to really demobilize and reintegrate and that should be reinforced by the state and government in fulfilling the promises and agreements signed."

Beyond disarmament of the FARC it's still unclear how much more Colombians are willing to work to fulfill the 310-page peace accord's ambitious agenda of land reform, a more open political system and an end to the cultivation of illegal coca crops.

Today a smooth paved road connects Mesetas with Bogota, but the community suffers from the same neglect and inequities that gave rise to the conflict. Like many other places torn by war, residents of the small town voted overwhelmingly for the peace agreement last year though many still harbor doubts as to whether the guerrillas will abandon their involvement in Colombia's flourishing criminal economy.

The rebels are also afraid that they could be targeted. Almost every guerrilla at the Mariana Paez camp recalled the decade-long bloodletting that followed a previous attempt at peace in the 1980s, when as many 3,000 members of a FARC-aligned political party were gunned down by right-wing paramilitary assassins, sometimes in cahoots with state intelligence services.

A more-recent rash of killings of dozens of social leaders highlighted in Londono's speech is also heightening concerns. Some guerrillas, who now wear jeans instead of fatigues, wonder if it is safe for them to leave.

"The tragic experiences of the past cannot be allowed to repeat themselves," said Londono, who is better known by his alias, Timochenko. "Our motherland has learned from her pain and because Colombians will not allow themselves to be cheated again."</s>In a ceremony that once seemed unimaginable, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, finished disarming on Tuesday as part of last year’s historic peace deal. With that, it officially morphed from an insurgent group that wrought violent havoc for more than half a century to a political entity aiming to attain power through the ballot.

President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC commander Rodrigo Londono, alias Timochenko, led the nationally televised ceremony in Mesetas, a rural town about 90 miles south of Bogota, the capital. About 2,000 ex-rebels, local officials and members of civil society groups and the media attended the ceremony.

Santos, who received the Nobel Peace Prize last year for pushing the peace deal amid widespread opposition among Colombians, told the gathering that the FARC has “exchanged arms for words.” Rebels were shown handing over weapons that United Nations officials then placed in white freight containers for storage and later destruction.

“Peace is irreversible,” Santos said. “Now we are just one people, just one nation. Long live peace.”

In addition to turning over the last of 7,132 weapons to the United Nations, the Marxist-Leninist FARC, which had been at war with the government since 1964, also gave the U.N. coordinates for 900 weapons caches spread around the country.

The ceremony was filled with images reflecting the FARC’s transition. Santos and Londono shook hands next to what appeared to be a golden assault rifle, but with a barrel that became the head of a shovel. A singer performed a song playing an instrument that appeared to be half gun, half guitar.

Although violence has decreased, Colombia is not yet tranquil. An estimated 250 FARC fighters have refused to disarm and remain at war with the government, said Bruce M. Bagley, a professor of international studies at the University of Miami. Another insurgent group, the 1,000-member National Liberation Army, or ELN, has resisted the government’s calls to negotiate and continues to kidnap and extort and to bomb oil pipelines.

Criminal drug trafficking groups, notably the so-called Urabenos gang, have rushed to fill the power vacuum in many rural areas once controlled by the FARC, Bagley said.

At Tuesday’s ceremony, rebels dressed in T-shirts instead of combat fatigues received plastic ID cards qualifying them for post-conflict aid programs. Mesetas is one of 26 “transition villages” scattered across rural Colombia where about 7,000 rebels were relocated from jungle and mountain hide-outs for the demobilization process.

After Aug. 1, the 26 locations will become “training and reincorporation spaces,” where rebels will receive education and counseling designed to ease their reentry into Colombian society.

“Today doesn’t end the existence of the FARC. It merely replaces the armed struggle with exclusively legal means,” rebel leader Londono told the gathering, adding that the FARC’s goal in peacetime will remain the same as it was during half a century of warfare, to attain power.

With their party guaranteed at least 10 seats in Congress for two terms starting 2018, FARC leaders will hold a convention in August to develop a political strategy, which could include forming alliances with existing parties or striking out on their own, leaders told reporters this week. Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert with the Washington Office on Latin America think tank, said they may use a nascent left-wing party called Marcha Patriotica as their electoral vehicle.

Colombia remains sharply divided over implementation of the peace accord, which the FARC signed last year. Opposing the accord as too generous to the rebels, a narrow majority of voters rejected it in an October plebiscite. Santos then sidestepped the voters and received congressional approval in November.

Skeptics worry that former rebels won't forswear criminal activities, including extortion and drug trafficking, while some backers of the peace deal doubt the government can keep its promise to funnel billions in agricultural aid and provide adequate protection to demilitarized rebels.

“It’s going to be fascinating to watch how the FARC transforms itself into a political force because it so rural and so unpopular,” Isacson said.

Colombians’ distrust of the FARC runs deep, and with Santos’ voter approval ratings at only 30%, he has been unable to generate broad popular support for the peace deal. Former President Alvaro Uribe, now a powerful senator and leading critic, has said he would urge a repeal of some of the accord’s provisions if his party’s candidate wins the presidency in 2018.

For his part, Londono said his rebels are concerned about the government’s ability to protect the FARC’s rank and file from attacks by right-wing paramilitary groups, a reference to how hundreds of members of the leftist Patriotic Union party were assassinated in the late 1980s because of its links to the FARC. He noted that several leftist social activists have been slain in recent months.

“Colombia will not tolerate another fraud,” Londono said.

Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Washington-based Latin America Working Group, a human rights advocacy group, said the FARC disarming should be seen as a “day of joy” and as a step toward a “more inclusive and peaceful Colombia.”

“But everyone must play their part to have real peace, or this chance will be lost for another generation,” Haugaard said. “The Colombian government must implement the accords, including its commitments to reintegrate the guerrillas and bring the civilian state into neglected, war-torn areas.”

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The United Nations confirms that the FARC has completed its disarmament process, with former rebels due to make the transition to civilian life and the group to transform into a legal political party in the country.