This Wednesday, delegates of the National Government announced that the decrees for a bilateral ceasefire with the ELN and dissidents will be repealed. They also requested a verifiable truce to advance in the process of “full peace”.
(Was there a ceasefire agreement with the ELN? Government responds).
with this decision The legal effects of the decrees will be restrained until there is an agreement between the parties for their implementation.
The Colombian government had announced on Tuesday the decrees by which the parameters were set for the bilateral ceasefire for six months with five armed groups, including the ELN.
In the five decrees, dated December 31, 2022 and that came into force on that day, detailed the way in which the State security forces must act in the places where they are present. the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Central General Staff of the FARC dissidents, the Segunda Marquetalia, the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) and the Sierra Nevada paramilitaries.
(Eln denies having agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with the government).
In this direction, the suspension of “offensive military operations and police operations” was expressly ordered against the members of these armed groups in order to “facilitate the installation of a dialogue table and achieve submission to justice and its dismantling.”
The documents, one for each group, specified that the ceasefire, in principle, would last until June 30, but it could be extended by the Government, after verification of the monitoring and verification mechanism.
However, hours before the decrees were released, the head of the Colombian government delegation in the peace talks with the ELN, Otty Patiño, acknowledged that the bilateral ceasefire with that guerrilla group announced by President Petro was a proposal at the negotiating table but never “a conclusion was reached”.
This guerrilla surprised this Tuesday with the publication of a communiqué in which it denied the announcement made by Petro shortly before midnight on December 31, according to which the ELN and four other illegal armed groups had agreed with the Government to cease the bilateral fire, 6 months long, until June 30.
(The step by step of the Government to evaluate a truce with armed groups).
Patiño explained that the ceasefire proposal will be “the first theme” that will be addressed in the next round of negotiations, which is scheduled to start this month in Mexico” and considered that the guerrilla’s response is “very encouraging”.
The ELN’s position led Petro to convene an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday with the participation of the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, and the Ministers of the Interior, Alfonso Prada, and Defense, Iván Velásquez, to assess the situation that resulted in the repeal of the decrees.
BRIEFCASE
With information from agencies
