The content of deals made between Colombia’s government and rebel group FARC will not be disclosed until a final peace accord has been agreed, said the government’s chief negotiator Tuesday.
Only partial aspects of the pacts agreed between the warring parties will be released until a peace agreement is finalized, at which point it will be published in its totality, and submitted to a referendum of the people, according to the government’s chief negotiator, Humberto de la Calle.
“The agreement will be published when we finish our task in Havana [where the negotiations are taking place] and it will be open for transparent public discussion so that the people can decide if they agree or not” read the statement published in newspaper El Espectador, indicating that there will be a “referendum mechanism” established so that “in the end, the Colombians decide.”
However, the report revealed that until such a final agreement, the negotiators will maintain “confidentiality so that the discussions can’t get stuck on small details and lose sight of the bigger perspective…a society with open doors, in which the FARC lay down their arms, demobilize and move on to politics without weapons.”
After six months of negotiating, the FARC and the Colombian government announced the agreement of the first point on the peace agenda on May 26, at which point President Santos partially revealed the “historic” agrarian reform.
MORE: Santos reveals part of undisclosed agrarian reform deal with FARC
During the reaction to the announcement, the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace told Colombia Reports that the negotiation teams would not be releasing the text of the signed document “until further notice,” and it now appears that full details will be withheld from the public domain until negotiations are brought to an end.
MORE: Colombian government’s agrarian deal with FARC ‘unacceptable’: Uribe
The negotiations are set to be resumed on June 11, with the political participation of the FARC the next item to be discussed.