By Sarah Morland
(Reuters) - Colombia's government on Monday decreed a three-month ceasefire with the country's largest group of dissident former FARC rebels, launching formal peace talks with the organization to end its part in a nearly six-decade internal armed conflict.
The ceasefire with the Estado Mayor Central (EMC (NYSE:EMC_old)) will be in force from Tuesday until Jan. 15 next year, the decree showed.
"We have little time," government high peace commissioner Danilo Rueda said at an event in Tibu, a town near the Venezuelan border in an area that has seen frequent clashes between Colombia's military and illegally armed groups.
"We have three months to win the hearts of many skeptical Colombians who are questioning this process of building peace," he said.
Rueda did not say why the cease-fire was shorter than the 10 months previously suggested by both sides, but government delegate Camilo Gonzales said authorities hoped to extend the ceasefire beyond the current deadline.
"We don't need to wait until a final agreement to move forward with partial, immediate agreements which help local people and signal routes for change," Gonzales said.
EMC delegate Andrey Avendaño also ratified the agreement and called for social-economic and environmental safeguards.
"We came to the table with the hope of reaching important achievements," he said, adding this opened a brief time frame to seek "timely and viable solutions for all Colombian society."
EMC, which split from the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas who accepted a 2016 peace deal, counts some 3,530 members - including some 2,180 combatants - in regions where drug trafficking and illegal gold mining take place, according to security sources.
The government of President Gustavo Petro, which is pushing for "total peace" with a plethora of armed groups after nearly six decades of internal conflict, has also said it will seek peace with Segunda Marquetalia, another FARC dissident group.
Petro's administration is also in peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), another rebel group, with which it began a six-month ceasefire in August.