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Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva led the delegation to Havana with the aim of resuming contact with the ELN guerrillas, which was interrupted in 2019 under the government of Iván Duque. Moving towards peace with this group and other armed gangs is one of the main commitments of the new president, Gustavo Petro.
These are the first steps towards the “total peace” sought by the new president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro. A delegation from his government traveled this Thursday, August 11, to Havana, Cuba, just four days after the new Administration took office.
The delegation, led by Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva, will meet with representatives of the National Liberation Army (ELN) with the aim of evaluating the conditions to resume peace talks with this guerrilla, interrupted in 2019 under the mandate of Iván Duque.
“Total peace is not only national but goes beyond borders,” Leyva said on Twitter. He is accompanied by the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, and Senator Iván Cepeda, among others.
Total peace is not only national but goes beyond borders. I share a photo taken this morning minutes before leaving for the Republic of Cuba. pic.twitter.com/81HY8qioZR
– Álvaro Leyva Durán (@AlvaroLeyva) August 11, 2022
From the Colombian region of Chocó, Petro also spoke: “We are going to compare, there are many rumours, statements, expressions in favor of truces, of possibilities for peace, but now it is a matter of seeing if it is true,” said the president.
Petro’s purpose is to resume the talks at the point where they were interrupted in 2019, when Duque withdrew after the ELN attack on the Bogota Cadet School, which left 22 soldiers dead.
The negotiations had begun in Quito, Ecuador, in 2014 under the government of Juan Manuel Santos, the president who managed to sign the peace agreement with the extinct FARC guerrilla in 2016. They then continued in Havana.
The ELN asks that its negotiators be able to return to Colombia
On the part of the ELN, alias Antonio García, the top guerrilla leader, said in an interview with the Colombian media outlet CM& that the one who broke the negotiation agreements was Duque, “now the new government and the Colombian state must be safe from such non-compliance.”
“It is the basics; therefore, a starting point to restart the talks,” Garcia said. The ELN leader refers to the fact that the administration prior to Petro, conservative, did not follow the established protocols in case the peace talks failed when he decided to withdraw from the negotiating table.
The agreements established that the government should allow the ELN negotiators to return freely to Colombia; instead, Duque asked for their extradition to Cuba and promised to persecute them if they arrived in the country. Since then, the guerrilla delegation has remained trapped, in some way, in Cuba.
This breach is still one of the rough edges that the Petro government will have to iron out with Havana, especially if the Cuban capital once again hosts the talks, something that remains to be confirmed.
Chile also offered to host the negotiations and recommitted to being one of the guarantor countries of the negotiation, as confirmed by President Gabriel Boric during his visit to Colombia for the possession of Petro.
Now, this new Administration will have to contact the other countries that were guarantors of the process to find out if they are willing to play that role again: Brazil, Norway, Cuba and also Venezuela, with whom it will be necessary to resume diplomatic relations that it also interrupted. Duke.
The path to “total peace”
Working for a “true and definitive” peace was Petro’s first commitment in his investiture speech. “We have to end six decades of armed conflict. I would say two centuries of permanent war, the eternal war and the perpetual war in Colombia,” he said from the Plaza de Bolívar on August 7.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the country is experiencing six armed conflicts. One is with the ELN, another is with the Clan del Golfo, also known as the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), and the others are with the multiple dissidences that emerged from the FARC during and after the peace process.
For now, all these groups have shown their willingness to talk and negotiate with the Petro government. The AGC published a letter in which they promised a ceasefire as of August 7, the day of the investiture of the new Administration.
“We are willing to dialogue and reconcile, with the aim of stopping the cyclical violence,” the letter said. The Duque government extradited one of the top leaders of the armed gang, alias “Otoniel,” and the group responded harshly with a crude armed strike and a series of recent attacks on infrastructure and military personnel.
But in addition to achieving peace with these armed gangs, Petro also has the challenge of enforcing the Peace Agreement signed between the FARC and the Santos government in 2016, which was practically left in suspense under Duque’s administration. According to the Indepaz organization, 335 ex-combatants of this guerrilla group have been killed since that date.
with local media
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