HAVANA – Although their organization is still in the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, Colombian leftist guerrilla leaders sat in the same baseball stadium with President Barack Obama Tuesday in Havana, according to FARC negotiator Pastor Alape who confirmed their attendance with Reuters.
Santo's predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, referred to the leftist group on Sunday as "a cocaine trafficking cartel and terrorist group." The U.S. State Department included the FARC in their Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in 1997.
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The leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, and some 40 FARC members attended the Tampa Bay Rays vs. Cuba baseball game in Havana Tuesday, Reuters reported. They were rooting for the Cuban national team.
Members of the FARC have been in negotiations in Havana with the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santo's administration since 2012.
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with the FARC leader, Rodrigo Londono, better known as Timochenko, who gave Kerry a book by the FARC's founder, Manuel Marulanda.
U.S. President Barack Obama will be asking Congress for some $450 million to help the Colombian government to deal with transitional endeavors such as a land mine removal effort, after the peace deal is done.
The Colombian military with assistance from the U.S. military has progressively weakened the FARC over the last two decades. According to government figures the group now has some 7,000 members.
The fighting between guerrillas and armed forces left Colombia with the largest displaced population of any country in the world after Syria.
FARC fighters like Commander Joaquin Gomez -- who is wanted for trafficking and the U.S. has a $2.5 million reward for his capture -- are preparing to return to civilian life.
"What is being sought is reconciliation, not impunity," said Gomez during a recent interview with PBS in Putumayo, Colombia.
Although some members of the FARC are eager to become politically active, they have their fears. A fighter known as Teofilo Panclasta told the New York Times that he was part of the FARC's Patriotic Union, a rising political party.
"If we up our rifles, our grenades, our pistols, we can only defend ourselves with our words," Panclasta told NYTimes' Nicholas Casey.
Ricardo Palmera, the highest ranking member of the FARC to be convicted in the U.S., remains in a Colorado prison. He is serving a 60-year sentence in the kidnapping of three American contractors. His brother Jaime Palmera told the Guardian that he visited him in February and they hope that Obama may pardon him in return for compensation for the victims.
"Colombians are very resentful," Palmera said during a recent interview with the Guardian. "If Ricardo gets out and comes back to Colombia, all of us in the family will have to leave the country."