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BOGOTA. – Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels will officially transform into a political party on September 1, a major step in reintegrating the former guerillas into civilian life as part of a historic peace deal.

“We will publicly launch the party on September 1 in the Plaza de Bolivar,” in Bogota, FARC commander Carlos Antonio Lozada told AFP after a news conference by the group, almost a month after it completed its disarmament.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is the largest and oldest rebel group in the country’s long-running civil war.

Although a smaller rebel group, the ELN, has yet to put down its weapons, the transition of the FARC into a political party will put a full stop to a 50-year conflict that left 260,000 people dead.

Lozada, whose real name is Julian Gallo, said the group had been working on the details of the “great political-cultural act.”

“We made peace to participate in politics,” FARC chief negotiator Ivan Marquez said.

The FARC political party’s policies and name will be decided at a congress at the end of August.

That meeting will take place just days before Pope Francis makes a special four-day visit to Colombia, from September 6-11, to add his weight to the process of reconciliation.

The disarmament last month by the roughly 7,000 members of Colombia’s biggest rebel group under the 2016 peace accord brought a halt to the half-century-old civil war.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching the historic deal with the FARC that was signed last November.

The accord was narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum last year before it was redrafted and pushed through congress.

That popular rejection was due to in part to resentment by many ordinary Colombians that the FARC would be allowed to enter political life, after decades of killing and kidnapping.

The country’s only remaining rebel group, the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN, is currently following the path set by the FARC to negotiate a peace deal aiming to disarm and demobilize.

Occasional clashes still break out between the ELN and government troops, and a government soldier was killed this month in a shoot-out with the rebel group.

But ELN negotiators were meeting Monday with Colombian government officials in the Ecuadorian capital Quito for a third round of talks aimed at reaching a similar peace deal to the FARC’s.

“We will try to advance a ceasefire agreement,” said government chief negotiator Juan Camilo Restrepo on Twitter.

Political analyst Victor de Currea said the process was making “very solid” progress and that both sides were hoping to declare a bilateral truce during the pope’s visit.

As well as leaving a quarter of a million dead, about 60 000 Colombians remain unaccounted for and seven million have been displaced in the conflict. – AFP.