Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday named a former vice president as chief negotiator in peace talks with rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN).

In a meeting with journalists, Santos said Gustavo Bell would replace Juan Camilo Restrepo after the latter announced that he would step down in January when a ceasefire with Colombia's last active rebel group ends.

Bell, 60, served as vice president under Andres Pastrana from 1998 to 2002, and will lead the government team negotiating a new ceasefire next month.

The news was welcomed by the rebels, who began their historic truce with Colombia's armed forces on October 1, after half a century of fighting. The peace moves came a year after the government signed a landmark peace accord with Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

More than 100 rights and labor activists killed in Colombia in 2017: UN
Bogota (AFP) Dec 20, 2017 - More than 100 activists for human and labor rights were killed in Colombia this year, after a landmark peace deal between the government and FARC rebels, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The deaths occurred in rural zones where the FARC was active, and where government authority was not present, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.

In total, up to December 20, a total 105 killings had been registered, it said. Another 11 were being verified.

Colombia's government, which had a different tally of such deaths, denied there was a systematic pattern to the murders.

Under the November 2016 peace deal, the FARC -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- went on to disarm and to transform itself into a political party using the same initials.

President Juan Manuel Santos has vowed to protect the demobilized fighters and rights activists.

His defense minister, Luis Carlos Villegas, said on Sunday that "most" of the murders were over turf disputes and "struggles over illicit income."

But the UN statement expressed concern at the killings, and said agitation for human rights appeared to be the determining motive for the violence.

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