Colombia soldiers die in rebel clash

13 February 2013 Last updated at 23:15 GMT At least seven Colombian soldiers have been killed and another five injured in clashes with the country's largest rebel group, the Farc.

The fighting occurred in a rural area of the southern province of Caqueta.

It come as the rebels and the government are engaged in peace talks to try to end their almost five-decade-old conflict.

However, tensions have been on the rise again since the Farc ended a unilateral ceasefire last month.

The Colombian army said it had received information about a planned rebel attack on the village of San Antonio de Getucha.

It said soldiers launched an operation to prevent the planned attack, "advancing deep into the entrails of the Farc's southern commando".

In its statement, the army said there had been "an indeterminate" number of casualties on the rebel side.

The Colombian government has refused to agree to a truce, saying it will only end its operations against the Farc once a peace agreement has been reached.

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Colombia pulls out of world court

28 November 2012 Last updated at 18:09 GMT Juan Manuel Santos said the court's decision was riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies Colombia has announced it no longer recognises the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, in The Hague.

The decision comes nine days after the ICJ redrew Colombia's maritime border in the Caribbean in favour of Nicaragua.

The court's ruling ended a decades-long dispute over the San Andres islands.

President Juan Manuel Santos said individual countries, and not courts of law, should fix their borders.

The ICJ ruled that the islands and a group of islets near the Nicaraguan coast in the western Caribbean belonged to Colombia.

But it set up new maritime borders in the potentially oil-rich area, extending Nicaragua's territory by some 70,000 square km (19,000 square miles).

The judgment, which is binding, was welcomed by Nicaragua but greeted with anger by President Santos.

'Peaceful means'

Mr Santos has now announced that Colombia is pulling out of the Bogota Treaty, signed in 1948, that recognises the court's rulings.

The region is rich in fishing resources, and potentially gas and oil

"The borders between nations cannot be in the hands of a court of law," he said. "They must be drawn by agreement between the countries involved."

Mr Santos reaffirmed he would only be using "peaceful means" to solve dispute.

The competing claims date from the early 19th Century, when the nations of Latin America were gaining their independence from Spain.

Nicaragua and Colombia signed a treaty in 1928 to settle the border and sovereignty of islands in the Caribbean.

But in 1980, Nicaragua's Sandinista government unilaterally annulled the agreement, arguing that it had been signed under US pressure.

In 2007, the ICJ ruled that the treaty was valid and that the sovereignty of three islands, San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina, remained with Colombia.

The archipelago lies some 775km (480 miles) from the Colombian coast and 230km from Nicaragua.

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