Members of the Colombian Government and the ELN, this Tuesday in Caracas. /
Both parties announce after a meeting in Caracas that they will resume peace negotiations “after the first week of November”
The guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Government of Colombia will resume peace negotiations after the first week of November, they announced this Tuesday in Caracas without specifying the place of the meetings suspended in 2019 by former President Iván Duque. “We announce the reestablishment of the dialogue process after the first week of November 2022,” says the statement read after a meeting held this Tuesday in Caracas.
In addition to the resumption of the “talking table”, the text reports the decision to “retake all the agreements and progress made since the signing of the agenda on March 30, 2016.” The meetings will be in “rotating venues” between the guarantor countries: Venezuela, Cuba and Norway, said Antonio García, ELN commander during a press conference in the Venezuelan capital after reading the statement. Similarly, he ruled out, for the time being, that Chile and Spain have any participation as guarantors of the talks. “We appreciate the will that exists but so far we are going to maintain the structure of guarantors that was agreed upon.”
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president in that country and a former guerrilla, reactivated contacts with the ELN after taking office on August 7, with his sights set on resuming the negotiations interrupted in 2019 by the Government of Iván Duque after of an attack against a police school that left 22 dead, in addition to the aggressor. The ELN delegates were welcomed for four years in Cuba, a country from which they left for Venezuela on October 2 to correspond to the new peace negotiations promised by Petro.
“Attack the causes”
The commander of the guerrilla group stressed that the way to seek peace in Colombia is not only through arms. We must “attack the causes that caused the armed conflict, which are inequality, lack of democracy, inequity,” he said. The ELN is the last recognized guerrilla group left in Colombia, while the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement in 2016.
The United Nations celebrated, for its part, the restart of the talks. «The resumption of dialogue between the Government of Colombia and the ELN, key to deepening peace in the country. From the UN we reaffirm our willingness to support dialogue and the implementation of agreements reached,” said Carlos Ruíz, representative of the multilateral organization in Colombia.
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Iván Duque, National Liberation Army, FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, UN, Caracas, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, Norway, Venezuela