The Biden administration is facing criticism over reports that the United States government is preparing to remove the Colombian rebel group FARC from its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
The U.S. State Department, according to Reuters, told Congress on Tuesday of the plan to delist FARC, five years after the rebel group signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government.
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"President Biden’s delisting of the #FARC as a foreign terrorist organization undermines U.S. security interests and stability in #Colombia and only serves as a gift to the criminal Maduro regime in #Venezuela," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Sen. Jim Risch tweeted Tuesday. "The administration should reverse course."
"Prematurely lifting #FARC’s designation as a terrorist organization is an exercise in appeasement," the Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee added on Twitter. "They have not exercised remorse or acts of contrition for their ongoing narco-terrorism against innocent Colombians & Americans. Our regional allies deserve better from this admin."
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State Department spokesman Ned Price confirmed the U.S. had informed Congress of an action it was taking with regard to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, widely known by its acronym, FARC. Price refused to say what that action was, however.
FARC fought for a half-century in an era of devastating political violence in Colombia, carrying out bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and attacks in the name of redistributing wealth to Colombia’s poor.
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The group signed a peace deal in 2016 and in 2018 took part in a U.N.-supervised decommissioning of the last of its accessible weapons. Price called the peace deal a "seminal turning point in some ways in the long-running Colombia conflict."
Associated Press contributed to this report