Members of Colombia's opposition have spoken out on a revised peace accord between the government and Marxist FARC rebels, criticising the new deal for impunity towards guerrilla members guilty of crimes.
The government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been in talks in Havana, Cuba for the last four years, hammering out a deal to end a conflict that has killed more than 220,000 and displaced millions.
The government published the revised peace deal last week in a bid to build support after the original draft was rejected in a 2 October referendum amid objections it was too favourable to the rebels.
Former president and now opposition Senator Alvaro Uribe said improvements have been made in the deal but there is still a way to go.
"Although the President of the Republic calls us radicals, we have accepted that in other areas there were modifications which we have thought convenient and we have said that there is a third category of issues that could be adjusted here in Congress.
"The serious thing is that the government does not give in to impunity, drug trafficking", he said.
Mr Uribe has criticised it as just a slightly altered version of the original and wants rebel leaders to be banned from holding public office and for them to be jailed for crimes.
The decision to ratify the revised accord in Congress instead of holding another referendum will anger members of the opposition, particularly the former president who spearheaded the push to reject the original accord and wants deeper changes to the new version.
The expanded and highly technical 310-page document appears to make only small modifications to the original text, such as clarifying private property rights and detailing more fully how the rebels would be confined in rural areas for crimes committed during the war.
The FARC, which began as a rebellion fighting rural poverty, has battled a dozen governments as well as right-wing paramilitary groups.
An end to the war with the FARC is unlikely to end violence in Colombia as the lucrative cocaine business has given rise to dangerous criminal gangs and traffickers.
The EU's special envoy to the Colombia peace process has said he does not expect the new agreement between Colombia's government and the leaders of the FARC rebel group will be put to the people.
The original one was rejected by the voters in a referendum earlier this year.
Eamon Gilmore told RTÉ's News At One the deal on the table is that the FARC rebel group end the violence, hand over their weapons and commit to pursuing their objectives by exclusively political and democratic means.
He said time, in getting the agreement through, is not on the side of the government and they have to move quickly to it in place.
"You have to remember that there are almost 6,000 FARC guerrillas who are still armed; who had intended to lay down their weapons in October if the referendum had been passed.
"They are now grouped in what are called 'pre-grouping areas'. It's not a satisfactory situation; it's not one that can continue for very long and associated with that is also the fact that they would have previously controlled parts of Colombia, which now the state has to take control of. And because of the kind of ambiguous situation, we are seeing other armed actors beginning to move into those areas."
