Meeting in Venezuela: peace talks for Colombia restart

Meeting in Venezuela
Peace talks for Colombia restart

The supposed ceasefire in Colombia initially gives rise to hope for peace, but the guerrilla group ELN disagrees. But there will still be talks with the government.

The government of Colombia and the guerrilla group ELN will meet again next week for peace talks after mutual upset. Colombia’s government delegation welcomes the “hospitality of Venezuela”, which will host an “extraordinary meeting with the ELN delegation on Wednesday,” official negotiator Otty Patiño told journalists on Saturday (local time). The ELN confirmed the meeting on Twitter.

At the turn of the year, the Colombian government around President Gustavo Petro initially announced a ceasefire with the ELN – which the rebel group denied shortly afterwards.

The focus of the talks now scheduled in the Venezuelan capital will be, among other things, a cessation of hostilities, said negotiator Patiño. Another meeting should also take place “in mid-February”, this time in Mexico.

This time the ELN also confirms

On Twitter, the ELN confirmed the date of the meeting and the resumption of negotiations. The aim of the dialogue will be to find a way out of the “crisis” that arose from Petro’s unilateral declaration of a ceasefire. In addition, it will be about the “harmonious continuation of the second round” of the peace talks.

President Gustavo Petro – himself a former guerrilla – announced on New Year’s Eve that he had agreed a six-month ceasefire with the country’s five largest armed groups. In addition to the ELN, he named dissidents from the dissolved left-wing rebel organization FARC and the armed arm of a drug gang as participants. However, the ELN denied the existence of the ceasefire on January 3 – after which the Colombian government suspended it, facing the group.

In 2016, the largest Colombian guerrilla organization, FARC, signed a peace agreement with the government. Since then, the group Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army, ELN), founded in 1964 by supporters of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, has been the strongest remaining rebel organization in Colombia.

Petro was elected the country’s first left-leaning head of state last year. His government has set itself the goal of “total peace” in the country. In November she therefore resumed the peace negotiations suspended by Petro’s predecessor, Iván Duque.

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