BOGOTA, Jan. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Eight hundred paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) will lay down their arms on January 14-18 in Colombia's northwest province of Cordoba.

    Legal adviser of the AUC, Carlos Lucio, told local radio station Caracol on Thursday that the paramilitaries to be demobilized belong to the North Bloc of the AUC and will be demobilized in Santa Fe de Ralito, in Cordoba.

    The government of President Alvaro Uribe has reached an agreement with AUC leaders to dismantle the far-right paramilitary organization by December this year at the latest.

    About 2,000 men of the AUC's Catatumbo, Calima, Cundinamarca, Bananero, Sur del Magdalena and Isla de San Fernando blocs have handed over their arms over the past three weeks.

    Under an agreement between the government and the AUC, at least3,000 paramilitaries had to lay down their arms by the end of 2004.

    The 20,000-strong AUC originates from vigilante groups set up by cattle ranchers and drug traffickers to combat left-wing guerrillas.

    Colombia has been locked in a four-decade civil war, the longest in Latin America, in which government forces, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries fight one another. The conflicts kill more than 3,000 people a year.

Enditem