New left-wing president and former insurgent Gustavo Petro pushed to renew dialogue to finish 60 years of battle.
The Colombian authorities and the left-wing Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN), the nation’s largest remaining insurgent group, launched new peace talks in neighbouring Venezuela geared toward ending almost 60 years of battle.
The push for the talks, which resumed on Monday after they had been suspended in 2019, got here from Colombia’s new first-ever left-wing President Gustavo Petro, who was a former member of the M-19 insurgent motion.
Petro has pledged a much less bellicose strategy to ending the violence wrought by armed teams, together with left-wing armed fighters and drug traffickers.
Dialogue begins in Venezuela
Representatives of ELN and Petro’s administration met in Venezuela, which restored diplomatic relations with Colombia in August after three years.
The delegates mentioned they'd gathered to restart a dialogue “with full political and moral will, as demanded by the individuals of rural and concrete territories that undergo from violence and exclusion, and different sectors of society”.
Either side are prepared to “construct peace based mostly on a democracy with justice”, they mentioned in a joint declaration.
The primary spherical will final 20 days, with diplomats from Venezuela, Cuba and Norway serving to within the negotiations, whereas representatives from Chile and Spain will observe it.
Many years-long Colombia battle
Colombia has suffered greater than half a century of armed battle between varied teams of left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitaries, drug traffickers and the federal government.
The ELN began in 1964 as a leftist ideological motion by college students, union leaders and clergymen impressed by Cuba’s revolution.
The group is believed to have about 4,000 fighters in Colombia, and can be current in Venezuela, the place it runs unlawful gold mines and drug trafficking routes.
Additionally it is recognized for staging kidnappings for ransom and assaults on oil infrastructure. America and the European Union have listed it as a “terrorist” organisation.
In 2016, a peace settlement disbanded the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, referred to as FARC, making ELN the most important remaining insurgent group. It has since elevated its actions in territories previously below FARC management.
Underneath former President Juan Manuel Santos, FARC signed a peace treaty, subsequently abandoning its weapons and making a political celebration.
In 2019, the peace talks with the ELN had been known as off by conservative former President Ivan Duque after a automotive bomb assault on a police academy in Bogota that killed 22 individuals.
Whole peace for Petro
After successful the elections in August, Petro reached out to the ELN as a part of his “whole peace” coverage.
The ELN delegation spent 4 years based mostly in Cuba, as they'd been barred from returning to Colombia by the earlier authorities.
Colombian Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez, nevertheless, warned that the negotiations don't suggest a “suspension of operations” towards the ELN.
“If there may be an encounter with somebody who has an arrest warrant, they should be captured … There is no such thing as a ceasefire,” he mentioned.
Insurgent group pledges ‘elementary’ change
ELN chief Israel Ramírez Pineda mentioned the group goals to make “elementary modifications”, as demanded by the Colombian individuals throughout monumental demonstrations in 2021 and in elections this 12 months by selecting Petro, abandoning the custom of conservative and average governments.
“Colombians can't see one another as enemies, the work we've is reconciliation,” Ramírez Pineda mentioned.
“We hope that the federal government’s delegation can have an interlocutor in the identical sense”.
He added that the rebels hope the USA takes a “proactive and supportive angle” to the dialogue. The US for many years has supported Colombia’s armed forces.
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