Bogota- General Juan Pablo Rodriguez, commander of the Colombian Military Forces, reported today that about 65,000 soldiers between members of the Army and Police are occupying the territories left free by the demobilization of the FARC-EP.

These troops will be deployed these days in 160 remote municipalities of the country, as part of the stabilization and strengthening plan to ensure the institutional control of those territories, the high officer said.

As part of the peace process agreed by the National Executive and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army, the objective of occupying these areas is to prevent they were taken by criminal gangs, as the government calls them, or paramilitary structures, as the guerrillas identify them.

Another objective is to prevent drug trafficking in these rural territories or actions of forced displacement of settlers by illegal military forces.

Rodriguez added that about 15,000 men from that mobilized force would stay near the so-called transitional zones, where the insurgent organization will begin to lay down weapons in front of the United Nations observers to reintegrate into civilian life.

During the negotiations between the government and the insurgency, which lasted almost four years in Havana, the two sides agreed to establish about 23 Transitional Zones and eight Camps, whose process is currently undergoing with certain delay due to logistical problems.