The High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, met in the south of the country with delegates from the FARC dissidents to explore an eventual negotiation, according to a statement.
“In the department of Caquetá we have held an exploration and rapprochement meeting to assess the possibility of initiating dialogue within the framework of total peace”, reads the text.
Rueda and four delegates from the insurgency, identified as Calarcá Córdoba, Alonso 45, Ermes Tovar and Erika Castro, endorse the message, released next to a photograph of the commissioner and four uniformed men sitting in a stable.
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The UN representative, Raúl Rosende, and the Norwegian diplomat Dag Nagoda also appear as “international observers” and appear in the image.
The meeting took place on Saturday and FARC dissidents belong to a faction known as the First Front or Southeastern Bloc.
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“The two parties express the willingness and need for these dialogues to be set by a bilateral ceasefirewhose execution must be verified,” said the government and dissidents.
Also they agreed on “a confidential protocol to guarantee a meeting” of the guerrilla commanders.
Rueda had announced during the week that the former number two of the former FARC, Iván Márquez, leader of another dissident faction known as ‘Segunda Marquetalia’, is interested in participating in the new dialogues.
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The proposal contemplates a multilateral ceasefire with the different groups that separated from the pact that reinstated some 7,000 former Farc combatants to civilian life.
The dissident factions are now at odds with each other for control of drug trafficking routes.
Other organizations such as the Eln guerrilla and the Clan del Golfo, a powerful arm of drug trafficking, have heeded the Petro’s call, without reaching an agreement for the moment to stop the violent escalation that Colombia is experiencing.
