HAVANA (AP) ― Countries assisting peace talks between Colombia’s government and leftist rebels said Wednesday night that an agreement was reached to free a general whose capture had jeopardized the negotiations.

A joint statement from Cuba, Norway, Venezuela and Chile said the two sides had agreed “on the conditions for the release” of Colombian army Gen. Ruben Dario Alzate and four other people taken captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in recent days.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos immediately celebrated the accord, saying in a statement that government peace negotiators will return to Havana as soon as all the prisoners are released.

The brief statement by the international guarantors didn’t say when Alzate and the others might be let go or give any details on what the conditions for their release are.

The development came on the second anniversary of the start of the peace talks, which Santos suspended when the FARC grabbed Alzate and two others as they traveled on a remote river in western Colombia on Sunday.

Earlier Wednesday, the FARC energetically defended the negotiations aimed at ending a half-century insurgency.

A FARC commander best known by his alias Ivan Marquez said the biggest achievement so far is a growing sense of reconciliation among Colombians.

The two sides have already agreed on wide-reaching agreements on agrarian reform, political participation for the FARC and how to jointly combat illicit drugs in what was long the world’s largest cocaine producer.

But the guerrillas’ recent actions have infuriated Colombian officials. In addition to the capture of Alzate, a U.S.-trained general who oversaw a counterinsurgency task force, FARC fighters in the past two weeks had killed two Indians and captured two soldiers during a firefight in northeastern Colombia.

Santos had also demanded the release of the two soldiers to resume talks.

The FARC had been pushing for a bilateral cease-fire but Santos has long rejected such an option amid criticism from conservative opponents and military officials who say it would allow the guerrillas to regroup after a decade of heavy battlefield losses.

The FARC considers captured military personnel to be prisoners of war but released all soldiers and swore off kidnapping of civilians before the start of peace talks in 2012.