President Alvaro Uribe, who has made a relentless war on the Farc the hallmark of his two administrations, sent a message to the rebel leader Ivan Marquez, whom he described as the "diplomat of terror".

BBC: Aerial attack kills 13 Farc rebels in Colombia

But the world's Friedmanites have waged a relentless guerrilla war against the idea, denouncing it as a farrago of value-destroying nonsense.

ECONOMIST: Attitudes to business

By 1916 and 1917 the relentless slaughter of a war of attrition had so deepened enmity on both sides that friendly meetings in no-man's-land were all but unthinkable, even at Christmas.

ECONOMIST: Bertie Felstead