In Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, the Government of Colombia and the National Liberation Army (ELN) began a fourth cycle of negotiations on Monday, August 14. The new talks seek to secure the ceasefire that began earlier this month and involve civil society. The new meeting takes place after the Prosecutor’s Office denounced an alleged guerrilla plan to assassinate the prosecutor and one of the opposition leaders.
First modification:
5 min
Caracas is once again the scene of peace talks between the ELN and the Government of Colombia. The Venezuelan capital hosts the fourth cycle of negotiations between both parties that seeks to reaffirm the ceasefire that came into effect on August 2 and also that seeks to agree on humanitarian relief for the areas hardest hit by the conflict.
The new dialogues will take place until September 4. At the opening, the ELN’s chief negotiator, alias ‘Pablo Beltrán’, assured that the group continues to have the willingness to “achieve a political solution to the conflict.”
Beltrán also pointed out that despite the fact that the process has had opponents, the enemies are “fewer and fewer.”
The new table also aims to bring the civil population closer to the process, assured Otty Patiño, representative of the Government of Colombia at the negotiating table.
We want to propose to the other delegation that we move forward so that this cycle is the cycle of the people, the people who live in the territories most affected by abandonment and violence, Patiño pointed out.
According to negotiators, the cycle It will seek to consolidate humanitarian aid for some of the territories most affected by the conflict. “If you asked me a result of this cycle, what is it, (I would answer) that the instruments that the table has created, which is the participation (of the population) and the ceasefire (to the fire), really bring humanitarian relief to the towns and cities that suffer the most,” Beltrán said.
A perspective shared by the Venezuelan Government, guarantor of the process. According to Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuelan vice president, humanitarian aid is “an urgent objective”, since it must “reduce the effects of the armed conflict on all the communities that have seen their right to development truly affected.”
In this sense, it seems that the new cycle will seek to emphasize having a territorial perspective. In fact, Patiño proposed “making concrete plans where the heads of the ELN war fronts and the communities of those territories participate” together with the civil and military authorities to “push in this cycle of peace (…) of the temporary to the final.”
The ceasefire, a milestone in the negotiations
The new cycle of negotiations takes place in the midst of an unprecedented panorama. The ELN and the Colombian government agreed to the longest ceasefire in their history in Havana, site of the previous negotiating table. The term of the agreement is six months and has been verified by a UN mission.
An environment conducive to advancing in the negotiations that Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president of the South American country, resumed in November 2022. It was one of the first measures he adopted when he came to power: unfreezing the dialogues that had been suspended by Former President Iván Duque, after the guerrillas carried out an attack on a military school in Bogotá, which left 22 dead.
Since then, the process has moved forward despite some setbacks. One of them was the announcement of a ceasefire by Petro at the end of last year, which hours later was denied by the guerrillas. The fact led the president to rectify the statement published on his Twitter account.
The current negotiations have a large group of guarantor countries made up of Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Norway. In addition, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain are accompanying the negotiations.
Complaints against the ELN for alleged attack plans
The unprecedented ceasefire was questioned by some sectors of Colombian society after the Attorney General’s Office announced that it was investigating an alleged ELN plan to assassinate Attorney General Francisco Barbosa.
“Three sources of information, one of them supplied by the military intelligence of the Armed Forces, another that came through the CTI (Technical Investigation Corps of the Prosecutor’s Office) and another supplied to an official of the Judicial Police (…) pointed out that a terrorist attack will be carried out against the Attorney General of the Nation, Francisco Barbosa Delgado,” the Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
The text detailed that an alleged “training for members of that armed group organized to carry out an attack with snipers” was being carried out.
The alleged threats also targeted opposition congresswoman María Fernanda Cabal and retired general Eduardo Zapateiro.
After learning about this complaint, the Colombian Foreign Minister, Álvaro Leyva, affirmed that these should be investigated with full rigor.
For its part, the ELN denied the information released by the Prosecutor’s Office. The guerrilla group assured that it was a “media strategy” that had the objective of “creating confusion in national and international opinion to reduce its credibility and generate doubts about the ELN, referring to compliance with the bilateral, national and temporary ceasefire agreed with the National Government”.
Despite the complaints and the ups and downs of the negotiations, the process with the ELN has a new chapter in Caracas. One on which the Government places a large part of its hope of bringing peace to Colombia after a bloody conflict that has lasted for decades.
An agreement with the ELN, the longest-serving active guerrilla in the country, would be a step forward in one of Petro’s main bets. In parallel, the president seeks to dialogue with the dissidents of the extinct FARC guerrilla, some paramilitary groups and even with gangs.
With EFE, AFP and local media
#Civil #society #pillar #fourth #cycle #dialogues #Colombian #government #ELN