Colombia Leader, Rebel Chief to Cuba in Push for Peace Deal

Colombia's president and the head of the FARC rebel group were due to meet in Cuba on Wednesday in a push to seal a peace accord and end a half-century guerrilla war.

After nearly three years of stop-and-start peace talks in Havana between the Bogota government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), President Juan Manuel Santos announced the surprise trip on Twitter, saying: "Peace is near."

The FARC went even further, saying "Peace has arrived," in a message posted on their negotiating team's Twitter account announcing that their leader, Timoleon "Timochenko" Jimenez, had arrived in Havana.

Santos and Timochenko will hold their first-ever meeting at 5:00 pm (2100 GMT), said a source in the Marxist rebel group's delegation in Havana.

Cuban President Raul Castro and the two negotiating teams will also be present, the rebel source said.

This is the first time since the talks opened in November 2012 that Santos has traveled to Cuba to take part -- raising hopes in Colombia that a major breakthrough is imminent.

The president, who won re-election last year vowing to see through the peace process he started, was expected in Havana early Wednesday afternoon.

A meeting between Santos and Timochenko, who is wanted in Colombia on charges of terrorism, rebellion, aggravated homicide and kidnapping, will be a landmark step in the peace process.

Santos said his trip to Havana was "for a key meeting with negotiators with the objective of accelerating the end of the conflict," which erupted in 1964 in the turbulent aftermath of a peasant uprising.

The president did not mention meeting the FARC leader or say how long he would spend in Havana. He is later due to travel to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

- 'End of conflict' -

Both sides have reported progress in resolving one of the most difficult issues of the peace talks -- how to bring justice for the atrocities that rights groups say both sides have committed in the conflict.

"Justice is at the heart of the peace negotiations and with an agreement on that issue, the dream of building a country in peace begins to become a reality," the president's office said in a statement.

The FARC had said on September 11 that the parties were "at the doors" of an agreement on the justice issue, which includes the sensitive question of whether guerrillas who lay down their arms will face prison time -- something the FARC have long rejected.

Santos' trip means that "a deal on transitional justice has been reached," predicted political analyst Jorge Restrepo, director of CERAC, a research center on the Colombian conflict.

"That would mark the end of the conflict phase and the beginning of the phase of transition toward the post-conflict era," he said.

- Pope's appeal for peace -

The FARC have been observing a unilateral ceasefire since July 20. Santos has repeatedly rebuffed their demands for a bilateral ceasefire, but has suspended air strikes on rebel positions.

The apparent breakthrough comes on the heels of a visit to Cuba by Pope Francis, who warned Sunday that Colombia could not afford "yet another failure in peace talks" and called for "definitive reconciliation."

Over the decades, the Colombian conflict has drawn in not only government troops and various leftist rebel groups, but also right-wing paramilitary groups -- now officially disbanded -- and drug traffickers.

One of the agreements already achieved at the talks is a deal on fighting the illegal drug trade that has fueled the conflict in the world's largest cocaine-producing country.

Other agreements reached so far have been on land reform and political participation for ex-rebel fighters.

Besides the justice issue, the other unsettled questions on the six-point agenda for the talks are disarmament and the mechanism by which the final accord will be ratified.

The conflict has killed more than 220,000 people and uprooted some six million.

The FARC, the largest of two leftist guerrilla groups, still has an estimated 7,000 fighters under arms.

The other remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has about 2,500.

The ELN and the government have been in "exploratory" talks since January 2014, but have not yet opened a formal peace process.