Members of the FARC group in Colombia have begun discussing the group's future in its first congress since the conclusion of a historic disarmament process.
Over 1,000 delegates from the recently-demobilised group attended the first day of the congress in Bogota.
FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timochenko, said the event would lead to the creation of a new exclusively political organisation.
The group is introducing its political party at the conference which began yesterday - a major step in its transition into a civilian organisation after more than 50 years of war - and its first chance to announce policy to sceptical voters.
The six-day meeting in Bogota is expected to conclude on Friday with a platform that the party will campaign on in elections next year.
Under its 2016 peace deal with the government to end its part in a war that has killed more than 220,000 people, the majority of fighters in the group formally known as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia were granted amnesty and allowed to participate in politics.
The group handed in more than 8,000 weapons to the United Nations during its demobilisation.
Whether the rebels will get backing from Colombians remains to be seen.
The peace accord, rejected by a less than 1% margin in a referendum before being modified and enacted, awards FARC's party ten automatic seats in Congress through 2026, but the group may campaign for others.
In a sight that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, FARC delegates arrived by bus to the centre of the capital, escorted by police on motorcycles.
"From this event on, we will transform into a new, exclusively political group that will carry out its activity by legal means," Timochenko told hundreds of attendees at the event centre in Bogota.
"We have in front of us many challenges and many difficulties. Nothing is easy in politics."
The party will initially be called the Revolutionary Alternative Force of Colombia, preserving the FARC initials in Spanish.
Both legislative and presidential elections will take place in 2018. It is not yet clear in which races the FARC will run candidates.
