“The two sides agree on the need to restart a dialogue process,” said peace commissioner Danilo Rueda, acknowledging the “legitimization” of the ELN negotiating team, led by one of the rebels’ commanders, Pablo Beltran.
Colombia’s new government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) agree that there is a need to resume the dialogue between them, which was interrupted four years ago, the head of the government delegation announced yesterday in Havana after meeting with negotiators of the rebel organization, officially of the last one that continues the armed struggle in the Andean state.
“The two sides agree on the need to restart a dialogue process,” said peace commissioner Danilo Rueda, acknowledging the “legitimization” of the ELN negotiating team, led by one of the rebels’ commanders, Pablo Beltran.
The latter also headed the rebels’ delegation to previous peace talks, which broke down in 2018 after hard-right former president Ivan Duque took power.
The meeting organized yesterday, under the auspices of Cuba and Norway, between representatives of the Colombian government and the rebel organization took place some 24 hours after the inauguration of Gustavo Petro, the first Colombian president in history who belongs to the left. Among the election promises of the 62-year-old former rebel head of state, who was elected on June 19, were to resume peace talks with armed groups and end the “war on drugs”.
Expressing satisfaction that “the ELN shares the will of the Colombian government,” Mr. Rueda assured that Bogotá will take “all judicial and political measures” to guarantee the conditions needed to return to the peace negotiation table.
The Colombian Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva also expressed his “optimism”, describing the outcome of the first contact as a “success”.
The visit of the government delegation also marked the rewarming of relations between Colombia and Cuba. Throughout his tenure, former President Duque demanded that Havana proceed with the extradition of members of the ELN delegation, which Havana, a guarantor of the peace process, rejected.
“I thanked Colombian Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva for his call yesterday to end the wrongful inclusion of Cuba on the US government’s list of states that support terrorism,” Cuban President Miguel DÃaz-Canel said on Twitter.
During a press conference in Bogotá, President Petro, for his part, underlined that the rapprochement with the ELN will allow “to see if what was left as a plan four years ago can be recovered.”
In anticipation, Bogotá yesterday announced the release by the ELN of nine people kidnapped by rebels on July 13.
After the historic peace agreement with the former rebel organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016, talks with the ELN had begun the following year, chaired by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), initially in Quito, then to Havana.
But they were suspended by his successor Ivan Duque after the bombing of a police academy in Bogota that killed 22 police officers and cadets, in addition to the attacker, in January 2019.
Despite a 2016 peace deal that led to the disarmament of most of the former FARC fighters, Colombia has seen a resurgence of violence in recent years, particularly between its defectors and other armed groups, who clash over control of drug trafficking and illegal mining of minerals.
According to authorities, the ELN, founded in 1964 by radicalized Catholic priests inspired by the revolution in Cuba, has about 2,500 members today, up from about 1,800 when peace negotiations were underway. It is a highly decentralized organization and is present mainly in sectors that are wet by the Pacific and on the border with Venezuela.
The civil war in Colombia has been going on for about six decades.
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