“It was agreed to carry out diplomatic actions with the government of the United States of America to find out its willingness to participate in this process through a special envoy to the dialogue table,” said a statement read by the representative of Norway, one of the guarantor countries. of the peace process in Colombia.
The agreement also “ratified Cuba, the Kingdom of Norway and Venezuela as guarantor countries” and it “agreed to invite Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain to consider their participation in this process as accompanying countries.”
The governments of Brazil and Mexico will also be summoned to join the negotiating table.
This is the second statement released after resuming the peace talks on Monday, November 21 in Caracas.
The parties also agreed to advance “in the short term humanitarian relief processes” as part of the points agreed in March 2016.
On Tuesday, delegates of Colombian President Gustavo Petro and the ELN agreed to “resume the dialogue process with full political and ethical will,” according to a joint statement entitled “Peace is our dream, change is our path,” read during an act at the exclusive Humboldt Hotel, in Ávila, the mountain that surrounds Caracas.
During that meeting, Pablo Beltrán, head of the ELN delegation, called the participation of the United States in the previous peace process in Colombia, signed during the administration of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, “disastrous.”
“The role of the United States in Latin America has been disastrous for the peace processes, the one that was recently installed in Colombia in 2016 had the opposition of several United States agencies for its implementation,” he said.
However, Beltrán affirmed that on this occasion they aspire for Washington to have “a proactive and supportive attitude.”
Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and former guerrilla, reactivated contacts with the ELN upon assuming power on August 7, with the goal of resuming the negotiations interrupted in January 2019 by the government of Iván Duque after an attack on a school that left 22 dead, in addition to the attacker.
The ELN is the last recognized guerrilla in Colombia. Founded in 1964 by unionists and students sympathetic to Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Cuban revolution, it has held unsuccessful negotiations with the last five presidents of that country.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement in 2016, becoming a political party.
