For the past ten months, President Al-varo Uribe's government has held talks about peace with leaders of the brutal right-wing vigilante militias known in Colombia as the paramilitaries. Yet apart from a showy demobilisation by a few hundred vigilantes in Medellin in November, little progress had been made. Despite a supposed unilateral ceasefire, the paramilitaries carried on killing and, in places, the army engaged them. Recently, the talks had seemed close to breaking down. So it was a surprise when last week ten leaders of the paramilitaries, who are grouped in the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), reached an agreement with the government. This will see them and their personal bodyguards- some 400 fighters in all- gather in a "location zone" in Cordoba, in northern Colombia, where talks will continue. In return, the government has agreed to lift arrest warrants against the ten, who include Salvatore Mancuso, the AUC'S military leader. Many of the ten are wanted for drug-trafficking as well as murder. The United States wants to extradite Mr Mancuso and one of the others to face drugs charges.
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