Petro seeks peace that six other presidents have failed to achieve

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Colombia’s leftist government and ELN guerrillas open historic negotiations to end the armed groups

For more than 30 years, six Colombian presidents have tried unsuccessfully to negotiate disarmament and ensuing peace with the National Liberation Army (ELN), one of the oldest guerrilla groups in the country. Gustavo Petro is the seventh president to try and the first from the left to sit down with the insurgents. The talks have been taking place in Venezuela since Monday.

The negotiations are being revived in the first hundred days of the legislature and when six years have already passed since the signing of the peace agreement in Havana with the FARC, the great Colombian guerrilla. Petro is determined to achieve “total peace” and end the violence that has bloodied the South American country for years. The president not only wants to convince the ELN, but also involves other armed groups of different origins in the dialogue.

The executives of César Gaviria (1991), Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), Álvaro Uribe (2004), Juan Manuel Santos (2014) and Iván Duque (2018). The latter suspended negotiations when the ELN carried out an attack on the Bogotá Police Cadet School in January 2019, which left 22 dead and 68 injured.

When the Caracas Dialogue Table was set up, the armed group’s chief negotiator, Pablo Beltrán, emphasized the change Colombia is experiencing, both on the street and at the polls. “We understand this moment and take our responsibility. This table must be an instrument of that wave of change that society is asking for and we hope not to disappoint that expectation,” said the guerrilla, who joined the group 42 years ago. “Colombians cannot see ourselves as enemies,” he said.

“The work we have is one of reconciliation, of finding common ground again, of building a nation in peace and equality. That is the bet we have and that is why we come to this table,” added Beltrán, second in charge of the ELN central command, of which Antonio García is the number one. Beltrán has already taken part in several attempts to negotiate with the government and is the main political spokesperson for the ELN.

On the agenda of the dialogue table are six key points for reaching a peace agreement. For the ELN, the participation of civil society in building peace is essential. The armed group demands that the people participate in initiatives and proposals. He believes this represents a very dynamic and active inclusive and pluralistic exercise that “enables building a vision of peace that promotes transformations for the nation and regions”.

Secondly, it is also essential for the ELN to review the forms and representations of the people in the democratic exercise and proposes guarantees for public demonstration for this purpose. In the third point, transformational programs are considered to overcome poverty, social exclusion, corruption and environmental degradation in search of justice.

The fourth point concerns the victims. It strives for recognition of their right to truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition of deeds. The fifth step of the agenda is about ending the conflict. What would the insurgents’ transition to legality be like, a legal resolution that provides security guarantees for those who lay down their arms, as well as guarantees for the conduct of politics, the bilateral ceasefire and the future of weapons left behind by the warfare . Finally, the sixth refers to an overall implementation plan, which will have control, monitoring and verification mechanisms and will involve the participation of civil society, the international community, the government and the ELN.

Already at the first coordination meeting with representatives of the ELN, the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, made it clear with representatives of the ELN that the negotiations will be far from being like those with the FARC. So nothing was agreed until everything was agreed. Now the formula is “a point agreed upon, a point met,” Rueda said.

Petro ordered the round of negotiations with the ELN to begin when he had been in power for only a few days. The first measure taken was to suspend the arrest and extradition warrants that weighed on the leaders of the insurgent group. The ELN responded by releasing nine kidnapped people.

Chief among the delegation designated by Petro to resume dialogue is Otty Patiño, a former leader of the M-19 guerrilla group that included Colombia’s current president. María José Pizarro, a senator from the Historical Pact, a coalition that won the last election and daughter of the ex-guerrilla and top leader of the M-19, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, assassinated in 1990 while running for president, also participate. , and Iván Cepeda, also a senator of the Historical Pact, and that he participated in the peace agreement between the government of Santos and the FARC.

Petro also offered Félix Lafaurie to join the dialogue table. The president of the National Cattlemen’s Federation, characterized as the most radical sector of the opposition, agreed. Petro reached an agreement with Lafaurie last month to purchase three million hectares of land that the government will give to farmers, in line with what was agreed in the first point of the peace deal with the extinct FARC.

The ELN survived thanks to drug trafficking and crime. Founded by the priest Camilo Torres, it also counted among its members the Spanish priests Manuel Pérez Martínez, who would become commander-in-chief in 1978, José Antonio Jiménez Comín and Damingo Laín.

Aside from kidnappings and attacks on civilians and soldiers, the ELN’s history includes three massacres that marked it as a terrorist group for the UN and the European Union. The most brutal and serious took place in October 1998, in Machuca, in the municipality of Segovia (Antioquia). During the early hours of the morning, the group detonated an explosive charge in Colombia’s central oil pipeline, sparking a fire that reached the population and killed 84 people.

Source: La Verdad

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