The Colombian High Commissioner for Peace, Iván Danilo Rueda, announced that the country will take the necessary steps to resume peace talks with the guerrilla group National Liberation Army (ELN). Rueda made this announcement in Havana, where he traveled with Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva to explore the possibility of resuming talks with the ELN.
(Dialogues with the ELN would be re-established in Cuba, assured the foreign minister).
“Both parties agree on the need to start the dialogue process” to demonstrate the “real will” of the Colombian government and the ELN to seek “total peace,” “stable, lasting and sustainable,” he said.
The High Commissioner stressed that The Colombian Government will adopt “all political and legal measures” to “guarantee the conditions” necessary for the resumption of talks. Rueda added that Colombia “recognizes the legitimacy” of the ELN’s desire for dialogue “in the search for peace.” Likewise, he “has verified” that the guerrillas also listen to “the voices of multiple sectors of society” that ask for a cessation of hostilities.
Rueda and Leyva’s trip took place after Petro, who took office last Sunday, reaffirmed at the beginning of the week that he will seek to resume peace talks with that guerrilla and pointed out that in the coming weeks it would be known whether those negotiations would end. will continue to carry out in Cuba.
(This is how Gustavo Petro’s cabinet is left).
The negotiations of the Colombian Government with the ELN began in 2017 in Quito, during the Government of Juan Manuel Santos, and in 2018 they were transferred to Havana, where the main leaders of the guerrilla are still, despite the fact that during the Government of Iván Duque was definitively paralyzed.
Petro has said that he wants to resume the protocol already established in the negotiations that “allows the continuation of the ELN talks there (in Havana)”, but stressed that it must be the Government of Cuba who agrees to once again sponsor the dialoguesas well as Norway its role as guarantor, or add new countries for this purpose.
(Benedetti, in Petro’s deck for ambassador to Venezuela).
The ELN’s top commander, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, alias “Antonio García,” stated in an interview with the CM& news program that the peace negotiations should be resumed at the point where they were stalled. The ELN, which has grown in strength in recent years, has already shown in various communiqués that it wants to return to the negotiating table to seek peace with the Petro government.
Talks have been on hold since 2018 Due to the demand of the Government of Duque to the ELN to release all the kidnapped persons that it has in its power and to renounce that and all its criminal activities. After the attack against the Cadet School in Bogotá in 2019, which left 22 dead and 68 wounded and was committed by the ELN, the Colombian government asked Cuba to hand over the negotiators who are in Havana, but the island invoked diplomatic protocols to not comply with that request.
EFE
