by Sylvia B. Zarate
BOGOTA, June 27 (Xinhua) -- The municipality of Mesetas in the department of Meta on Tuesday saw the final disarmament of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia's former largest guerrilla group.
This last handing over of weapons was supervised by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Supreme Commander of the FARC Rodrigo Londono, and head of the UN Mission in Colombia Jean Arnault.
The UN team, with the task to ensure all weapons to be submitted, revealed during the ceremony that it had certified 7,132 individual weapons.
Furthermore, Arnault revealed that 77 caches had been verified with ammunition, explosives and weaponry destroyed.
The only weapons not surrendered by the FARC, as agreed, will serve to provide security at the 26 FARC transition camps until Aug. 1.
Londono thanked the UN and countries that helped the peace process. "We have not failed Colombia. We have left our weapons today. The State has offered us in exchange to build a political party...(and) the tragedies experienced in the past cannot be repeated, as our country has learned from its pain," he said.
President Santos thanked the international community, and especially FARC members, for deciding to end decades-long armed conflicts in the country.
"Without weapons, without violence, we are no longer people fighting themselves. We are no longer a history of pain and death...we are one nation reaching to the future in the blessed cause of democracy," Santos said.
Santos, who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace to Colombia, reiterated that while he does not identify with the political and economic model espoused by the FARC, he would defend their right of free speech and to express their ideas within the democratic process.
After his speech, Santos and Londono posed with the work "Cultivating Peace" by Colombian artist Alex Sastoque, which depicts an AK-47 rifle turned into a shovel.
The event also saw the participation of ministers, representatives from guarantor countries, facilitators of the peace agreement signed between Colombian government and the FARC, and members of NGOs.
The UN members, in charge of receiving and storing the weapons, explained how the work had been carried out and formally closed the doors of the containers, where the weapons will be kept until they are melted down to build three monuments to honor peace.
The monuments will then be placed in Bogota and Havana, where the peace talks had been held for four years, and at the UN headquarters in New York.
