Although the first days of the new round of talks between the Colombian government of Gustavo Petro and the National Liberation Army (ELN) will be devoted to making adjustments to the six-point agenda agreed upon when Juan Manuel Santos was president, at the Mesa de In conversations the topic of the liberation of territories controlled by the guerrilla was placed.
“This political dialogue has important issues for the country, concrete transformations in the territorial,” said Iván Danilo Rueda, High Commissioner for Peace of the Government of Colombia, when delivering his first public statement at the Humboldt Hotel, Caracas, where he began this Monday. the new round of dialogues.
Rueda pointed out that “at the center of this dialogue is life…” to leave behind the “dynamics of death” that has plunged the neighboring country into “a conflict with political motivations.”
On this basis, Rueda announced that they are heading towards “a new reconfiguration in the territories where violence is experienced today” and in which “a set of rights that have been denied in Colombia” are restored.
Pablo Beltrán, the first commander of the ELN, endorsed what Rueda said by saying that “we cannot see ourselves as enemies.”
Beltrán spoke of “building on what has been built” when touching on the agenda that will be addressed at the Round Table, which will last until December with the purpose of “putting an end to the armed conflict.”
“We have told the Government that if it has adjustments we will listen to them; what is added to it, what is adjusted, that will occupy the first days of work”, explained Beltrán, who hopes that this new era of dialogue will produce “a much more structured agenda for a next round next year”.
