Colombia's Marxist FARC rebel chief warns president

In his first message since taking the helm of Latin America's longest-fighting rebels, new FARC chief Timoleon Jimenez, alias Timochenko, Sunday warned Colombia's president: "we all have to die, (Juan Manuel) Santos, every one of us." "Nobody is going to escape that fact... Some for one cause, and others for another," Timochenko said in a message released online following the government's elimination of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader Alfonso Cano earlier this month. Cano, who had led the FARC since 2008, was gunned down in a November 4 shootout. Alluding to the strike that killed Cano, Timochenko, 52, called the massive government operation "threatening and brutal. "History teaches us that the majority of people are appalled by that kind of overdone showy stuff," he added. Santos said Thursday in Bogota that Timochenko would share Cano's fate unless he gave his actions serious thought. The FARC, believed to have 8,000 members, has been at war with the government since 1964. It began a campaign of kidnappings in the mid-1980s, seizing army hostages to serve as bargaining chips for FARC prisoners. By the late 1990s, civilians and political leaders were also being snatched, winning the group greater notoriety. The operation to kill Cano was the latest in a string of recent military victories in the government's quest to eradicate Latin America's longest-running leftist insurgency, after years of unsuccessful attempts to find a negotiated solution. The FARC lost its number two Raul Reyes during a Colombian army raid in Ecuadoran territory in 2008. That same year, the FARC also lost Manuel "Sure Shot" Marulanda Velez, the reclusive 80-year-old rebel chief, who was last seen in 1982. He died after a brief illness.