Colombian President Gustavo Petro proposed yesterday Saturday to the National Liberation Army (ELN) organization to work “seriously” in order to agree and implement a ceasefire in principle at a local, regional level, before extending it to the entire country afterwards.

“I propose that we work seriously for [να κηρυχθεί] cease fire, to stop killing each other, to stop killing each other,” the head of state said during an event with the participation of farmers’ organizations in southwestern Colombia.

“We can start not on a national scale, as I suggested in December, which is complicated, difficult, very unstable, very dangerous, but on a local and regional level,” continued the social democrat Mr Petros, the first president to belong to the left in the country’s history.

On its own initiative, the government has been negotiating since the end of 2022 with the rebel organization ELN (Guevarists), officially the last one to continue the armed struggle in Colombia.

Talks began in November in Caracas and continued in March in Mexico, where the parties pledged to discuss declaring a ceasefire.

In Havana, where the third round of negotiations began on May 2, the Colombian government reaffirmed its willingness to declare a mutual ceasefire with the ELN on a national scale.

Yesterday, Mr. Petros emphasized that in the first phase, the truce can be implemented “locally”.

“We can pick a specific region (…) and then start expanding it to the rest of Colombia over time,” he explained.

According to the government’s chief negotiator, Oti Patinho, the government hopes to reach a mutual ceasefire agreement before local elections in October.

In more than half a century of civil armed conflict, peace negotiations with various armed groups have repeatedly been held in Colombia, which in several cases have failed.

But in 2016, a historic agreement led to the disarmament and dissolution of the powerful former rebel organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and its transformation into a political party.