Colombia's FARC rebels said Monday peace talks with the government are stalled over the issue of a bilateral ceasefire, the latest snag in a bid to end five decades of conflict.

Speaking after both sides acknowledged that a March 23 deadline they had set themselves would likely pass without the signing of a final accord, FARC negotiator Carlos Lozada said the talks were stumbling over the details of an eventual truce.

In their secret jungle camps, Colombia's Marxist rebels used to learn how to fight. Now their leaders are trying to teach them how not to.

They still carry the rifles and machetes they have used for half a century in their war against the Colombian government.

Colombia's national police chief resigned on Wednesday, caught up in a male prostitution scandal that has also seen the country's deputy interior minister quit his post.

The latest resignation came a day after prosecutors launched a probe into allegations that police officials ran a male prostitution network from 2004 to 2008.

Colombia's FARC rebel force promised Wednesday to end recruitment of all child soldiers to its ranks, in a further bid to seal a peace deal ending a half-century conflict.

At peace talks in Cuba, the leftist guerilla group had already pledged to stop recruiting fighters under 17, but the Colombian government said that did not go far enough.

Colombia announced Saturday that more than 2,000 pregnant women in the South American country have been infected with the Zika virus, which is suspected of causing brain damage in newborns.

The National Health Institute reported that Colombia now has 20,297 cases of Zika infection, including 2,116 in pregnant women.

Latin American leaders gathered Wednesday for a summit focused on Colombia's request for personnel for a U.N. mission to oversee what the region hopes is an imminent peace deal with the FARC rebels.

The request from the Colombian government and the leftist guerrilla group for unarmed observers to monitor the eventual end of their half-century conflict tops the agenda as leaders from the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) meet in the Ecuadoran capital Quito.

Colombia said Thursday it has freed 16 FARC guerrillas pardoned in peace negotiations with the leftist rebels, as the two sides move toward a deal to end their half-century conflict.

The jailed rebels, the first out of a group of 30 to be pardoned, were released in a goodwill gesture to reciprocate for a unilateral ceasefire declared by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in July, said the office of the government's high commissioner for peace.

When Delfina Wazorna thinks back on the home she left behind, she remembers machine guns, armed men and death threats.

It makes the Embera indigenous woman skeptical of the peace deal that Colombia's government and its main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), have vowed to sign in the first three months of the new year.

Clearing the landmines from the half-century conflict in Colombia, which has the most mines of any country outside Afghanistan, will take a generation, Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas says.

As the Colombian government and FARC rebels close in on a landmark peace deal, anti-personnel mines are one of the biggest problems facing the South American country in its post-conflict transition.

Until recently, Milena Reyes spent her days slogging around the jungle, dressed in combat fatigues and carrying an assault rifle.

The Colombian guerrilla fighter never imagined she would end up in front of a TV camera wearing make-up and high heels to present the first-ever news program by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on YouTube.