Colombian president presses for progress

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has urged FARC rebels to pick up the pace of peace negotiations under way in Cuba for almost a year now. "I ask the FARC again: let's get this process moving faster," Santos said at an event ahead of the November 18 first anniversary of a dialogue aimed at ending Latin America's longest running insurgency. "We have got to speed things up because people are starting not to believe in the process," Santos said. The Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), with an estimated 8,000 fighters, have been waging an insurgency against the state since 1964. "We need to move forward. We need agreements. We cannot be putting things off forever," Santos added. "The worst enemy the peace process can have is this skepticism." After 11 months of negotiations, the Bogota government and leftist fighters have reached a deal on just one key issue -- land reform -- with progress stalled on four other agenda items, notably how the FARC will give up their weapons and enter the political process. A recent government commission estimated that 220,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict. Other estimates run as high as 600,000 dead.