Both sides announce after meeting in Caracas that they will resume peace negotiations “after the first week of November”
National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas and Colombia’s government will resume peace negotiations after the first week of November, they announced on Tuesday in Caracas without specifying the venue of the meetings suspended in 2019 by former President Iván Duque . “We are announcing the resumption of the dialogue process after the first week of November 2022,” the statement read after a meeting held this Tuesday in Caracas.
In addition to the resumption of the “talking table”, the text states the decision to “take back all agreements and progress made since the signing of the agenda on March 30, 2016”. The meetings will take place in “alternating locations” between the guarantee countries: Venezuela, Cuba and Norway, ELN commander Antonio García said at a press conference in the Venezuelan capital after reading the statement. Likewise, he provisionally ruled out Chile and Spain having any participation as guarantor of the talks. “We appreciate the will that exists, but so far we are going to maintain the guarantor structure that has been agreed.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, the country’s first left-wing president and a former guerrilla, resumed contacts with the ELN after taking office on August 7, with his sights set on resuming negotiations that were interrupted in 2019 by the government of Colombia. Iván Duque after an attack on a police school in which 22 people were killed in addition to the aggressor. The ELN delegates were welcomed for four years to Cuba, a country from which they left for Venezuela on October 2 to correspond with the new peace negotiations that Petro had promised.
The commander of the guerrilla group emphasized that the path to peace in Colombia is not only through weapons. We must “attack the causes that created the armed conflict, namely inequality, lack of democracy, inequality,” he said. The ELN is the last recognized guerrilla group in Colombia, while the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement in 2016.
For their part, the United Nations celebrated the restart of the talks. «The resumption of dialogue between the government of Colombia and the ELN, the key to deepening peace in the country. From the UN, we reaffirm our willingness to support the dialogue and implementation of agreements reached,” said Carlos Ruíz, representative of the multilateral organization in Colombia.
Source: La Verdad
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