2023-06-08 07:01:00
President Gustavo Petro and the top commander of the ELN, Antonio García, will sit at the same table for the first time since this fifth attempt to negotiate peace began.
The reason is the biggest advance in 8 months of talks: after several attempts and two major crises, both delegations will announce a bilateral ceasefire that will apply throughout the country and will last for at least six months.
As confirmed by EL COLOMBIANO with negotiators on both sides, it is a fact that the head of state and the eleno commander will arrive in Havana, Cuba, and will detail the start of this measure and the conditions under which it will be evaluated month by month to cultivate the confidence and avoid mistakes.
To that end, the president will leave on a flight from Bogotá and Antonio García will fly from Venezuela to Cuba. The latter after the Attorney General’s Office will lift the arrest warrants that were in force against him.
Once they arrive at the official venue, both will hold private meetings with the delegations and will attend a press conference to read a joint statement.
But the Table has not always been so willing to reach consensus. Before the decree was ready, the government and the ELN had incompatible differences that, at the time, threatened to suspend the peace process.
In fact, the table had moments of recent tension after the president leaked a draft – by mistake or convenience to calm the scandal he is going through – in which details of that document that the Government and the ELN will sign were read.
The clear points of the cessation
During their stay in Cuba, the delegations had announced that they would prioritize two specific points on the agenda: the participation of society in the construction of that peace agreement and the cessation of shooting between the Elenos and the Army.
Within the Roundtable, almost everything is confidential and no member is authorized to give details of what is being negotiated. For this reason, it is difficult for the press to confirm how the charges are and what the government and the ELN are giving up.
Despite this, the draft decree that the president leaked ordered that the termination be for an initial period of 6 months and would start this Thursday, June 8, the exact date that Petro will be in Cuba.
Added to that, it was learned that the termination would be at the national level, and not regional, as the president had repeatedly proposed.
This point adds a victory to the ELN, since García had demanded that it be throughout the country so that all his troops, without exception, comply with what was agreed.
In this sense, the cessation will also serve to measure how the commanders are within the guerrilla, since there are doubts that they all respond to the Central Command directed by Antonio and represented by the head of that delegation, Pablo Beltrán.
Finally, it is estimated that both delegations would sit down every month to evaluate how the termination is going and perfect possible errors on both sides.
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