Representatives for the Colombian government and the leftist FARC rebels were in Oslo on Wednesday to kick off talks aimed at ending the longest-running conflict in Latin America, a source told AFP.

"The two parties are here," the source in Oslo who asked to remain anonymous said.

The two sides were to meet in an undisclosed location on Wednesday to discuss technical and logistical issues before the formal beginning of peace talks on Thursday.

A press conference kicking off the talks is scheduled for Thursday at 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) in a hotel in Hurdal, a small town north of Oslo, the Norwegian foreign ministry said.

Norway and Cuba, where the negotiations are set to continue after Oslo, are playing the role of facilitators in the peace process that seeks to end a conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the past 50 years.

This is the fourth official attempt to resolve Colombia's insurgency, and will be the government's first direct talks with the Marxist rebels in a decade.