Colombia's peace process lurched back from near-collapse yesterday.
But President Mr Andres Pastrana immediately set a new six-day deadline for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels to flesh out a cease-fire deal or face an army offensive.
After a tense day of talks with ambassadors of 10 facilitating countries and a UN envoy, the guerrillas yielded just hours before a government ultimatum expired for them to commit themselves to a ceasefire by last night or surrender their demilitarised enclave.
President Pastrana on Saturday gave FARC until 9.30 p.m. EST yesterday (2.30 a.m. Irish time) to leave the towns of the Switzerland-sized zone he ceded to them in late 1998 to draw them into talks.
An army attacj would have meant the end of three years of attempts to end a 38-year-old war that has claimed 40,000 lives in the past decade.
During the talks, the FARC, which wants a socialist state, has continued fighting outside the zone inside which the army says they keep kidnap victims and run a drug business.
But the guerrillas made a U-turn just four-and-a-half hours before the 48-hour deadline would have triggered a push by tanks and 12,000 troops into their territory.
They dropped demands for relaxed security around their safe haven and agreed to start immediate talks on silencing their guns and ending their kidnap business.