Almost at the same time, President Gustavo Petro and the ELN confirmed the reestablishment of the peace talks.
(Venezuela’s commitments as guarantor of peace talks with the ELN).
“From Caracas, the peace talks are officially resumed between our government and the ELN, together with the guarantor countries of Venezuela, Cuba and Norway”, President Petro reported while in Caracas a delegation from the guerrilla group made the announcement at an event that was also attended by representatives of the Catholic Church and the United Nations, in addition to Norway and Cuba as guarantor countries.
From Caracas, the peace talks are officially resumed between our government and the ELN, together with the guarantor countries of Venezuela, Cuba and Norway. pic.twitter.com/FVZnyKJ8IX
– Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) October 4, 2022
The delegations reported in a statement that several points of agreement were reached. First, to reinstate the talks table with their respective delegations. Also, “Retake all the agreements and progress made since the signing of the agenda on March 30, 2016.”
Thus, the Government of Colombia and the ELN announced the reestablishment of the dialogues “after the first week of November 2022”.
(Sánchez offers Spain for peace talks between Colombia and the ELN).
Antonio García, a member of the ELN and representative of that guerrilla group, clarified that the venues for the talks will rotate and that, for now, international participation will be that of the countries defined as guarantors: Cuba, Venezuela and Norway.
“The new political circumstances in Colombia have made it possible to restart the negotiations. The confidence we have now is that there is a shift in the peace policy,” said García, who also spoke of Gustavo Petro’s ‘total peace’ proposal and noted: “The most important thing is not to deny the conflicts; it is to know how to deal with them. There are armed groups that respond to causes other than the social movement.”
For his part, Danilo Rueda, Colombia’s peace commissioner, clarified that Venezuela, as well as Cuba and Norway, will not be “intermediaries” otherwise “guarantors”. He explained that “what is agreed will be between the parties” and I add: “We have complied with the protocols and we have complied with what the Colombian government signed. This generates confidence so that the dialogue is seen not as rhetoric but as a change.”
Reactivation of the dialogues
This Sunday it was learned that the ELN delegation that was in Cuba left the island and moved to Venezuelan territory.
The Government of Venezuela, the guarantor country of the negotiations between the Colombian Executive and the National Liberation Army (Eln), celebrated the “compliance with agreed protocols” between both parties for the resumption of dialogue, interrupted since 2019.
The last dialogues with this guerrilla began in February 2017 in Quito, from where they were transferred to Havana the following year. Shortly after, they were stalled at the beginning of the Duque government (2018-2022) and definitively frozen after an attack by that guerrilla against the police school in Bogotá. in January 2019, where 23 people died and nearly a hundred were injured.
(They suspended arrest warrants for ELN negotiators: what’s coming).
With the arrival of the new government headed by Gustavo Petro, the rapprochements were reactivated.
On September 13, the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, accepted the request that, he assured, he received the day before in a letter from Petro, if he were to be “guarantor of the negotiations and peace agreements in Colombia” with the ELN guerrillas.
BRIEFCASE
With information from THE TIME
