The Colombian government and FARC dissidents hold an exploratory meeting | President Gustavo Petro assured that “a dialogue begins”

by time news

A delegation from colombian government and another from the most powerful front of the FARC dissidents they had one “exploratory meeting” in the southern department of Caquetá to “assess the possibility of initiate dialogues in the framework of total peace“, which would include a bilateral ceasefire. The dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia distanced themselves from the peace agreement signed by the State and the guerrillas in 2016 and have historical figures of the insurgent militia such as Iván Márquez.

“Start a Dialogue”said this Sunday the president Gustavo Petro on his Twitter account, where he shared a photo in which dissidents in camouflage clothing are seen talking with the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, and the number two of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia, Raúl Rosende . In August, the left came to power for the first time in Colombia, headed by Petro, who proposes a total peace policy to put an end to an internal conflict of almost six decades.

The government and its total peace proposal

In a joint statement signed by Rueda, Rosende, four dissidents and the Norwegian diplomat Dag Nagoda, the parties assured that they express the “willingness and need for these dialogues to be set in the context of a bilateral ceasefirewhose execution must be verified.” The dissidents who met with the government identified themselves with the aliases of “Calarca Cordoba”, “Alonso 45”, “Ermes Tovar” y “Erika Castro”.

Commissioner Rueda explained to the dissidents the concept of total peace, which seeks to bring to the negotiating table the groups outside the law that still operate in the country. The idea is achieve a peace agreement with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) like the one reached at the time with the FARCand with criminal gangs and dissidents, reach a legal settlement or submission to justice.

“A central issue is the response of the government in total peace to the binding substantial citizen demands and the rights that must be guaranteed to transition to the Social and Environmental State of Law,” says the joint statement that warns about the closure: “We consider that like never before, in the history of our country, the conditions are being created to leave decades of fratricidal violence behind forever“.

The contribution of the dissidents

For its part, the central staff of the dissidents assured that for these groups total peace “means the eradication of the causes that generate social and armed conflict” and asked that the first step be the declaration, as soon as possible, of a “bilateral ceasefire agreed by the parties, thus avoiding more pain in Colombian families”.

Given this, “the parties agreed to sign a confidential protocol to guarantee a meeting of the commanders” of the central staff of the FARC dissidents, who are spread throughout the country.

opposition criticism

the former senator Carlos Fernando Galan, one of the leaders of the New Liberalism party, was one of the first to repudiate the meeting. “The Colombian State must not negotiate with the FARC dissidents, it cannot give them a political status. They must submit to justice. Period,” Galán, also a former candidate for mayor of Bogotá, wrote on his Twitter account, referring to the fact that precisely these people did not adhere to the peace agreement signed by the guerrillas and the government in 2016.

Alejandro Eder, who was a senior presidential adviser for Reintegration between 2010 and 2014, during the government of Juan Manuel Santos, assured that “the only option for any repeat offender of the Havana agreements or any member of criminal organizations founded by ex-FARC is submission to justice”. On the other hand, the senator of the Historical Pact, Ivan Cepedadefended the government’s policy of rapprochement by expressing: “The pursuit of a multilateral ceasefire is not some act of state weakness or naive concession. It is not a problem of negotiation method or tactics. It is about the need to protect populations in the territories as a step to build total peace.”

Meetings with other groups

This week Commissioner Rueda assured in an interview with the CM& newscast that the dissident “Ivan Marquez”Whoever it was FARC negotiator, its alive and authorized the general staff of the Second Marquetaliathe group that he leads and that brings together another group of FARC dissidents, approaches the policy of total peace.

The Second Marquetalia, added Rueda, “has expressed its willingness to be part of total peace” as “has been done by an armed structure known” as the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), which is the main criminal gang in the country and is also known as Clan del Golfo. The commissioner also revealed that he held exploratory meetings with the dissidents “in a place in Colombia that the country will already know.”

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