Colombia’s new guerrillas and members of the country’s latest guerrilla organization took steps on Friday to revive peace talks suspended 3 years ago in Cuba.
Following an assembly between representatives of the two sides in Havana, Colombia’s national peace commissioner Danilo Rueda said the government will take mandatory “judicial and political measures” to engage in imaginable peace talks with the National Liberation Army, known as the ELN.
Observers that these measures will most likely come with the lifting of arrest warrants against ELN negotiators who have recently been living in exile in Cuba.
The management of the new president Gustavo Petro will have interaction with the ELN delegation and considers it valid representatives of the group, Rueda said.
“We who the ELN have the same preference for peace as the Colombian government,” Rueda said in his statement. “And I hope they will pay attention to the many voices in other territories seeking a non-violent way out of this armed conflict. “
Peace talks between the former Colombian and the ELN ended in 2019 after rebels detonated a car bomb at a police academy in Bogota and killed more than 20 cadets.
Following this incident, the Colombian government issued arrest warrants for ELN leaders in Cuba for peace negotiations. But Cuba refused to extradite them, arguing that it would jeopardize its impartiality as a country in the confrontation and break diplomatic protocols.
The United States responded through the Cuba directory as a sponsor of terrorism.
Petro said he needs to start peace talks with the country’s remaining armed teams with the aim of reducing violence in rural spaces and bringing lasting peace to the country of 50 million people.
A 2016 peace deal between the government and the country’s largest guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, helped kidnappings, killings and forced displacement.
But violence has resumed in some parts of the country as FARC resistance fighters, drug trafficking teams and the ELN battle cocaine smuggling routes, illegal mines and other resources that have been abandoned by the FARC.
In July, teams of criminals carried out around 90 attacks on police and military personnel, killing thirteen police officers, according to CERAC, a think tank that monitors violence in Colombia. This has made it one of the most damaging months for the Colombian armed forces in beyond two decades.
The ELN, which was founded in the 1960s, has long been designated through the U. S. State Department. The U. S. as a foreign terrorist organization. The organization has about 2,500 fighters in Colombia and also operates drug trafficking routes, extortion and illegal mines in neighboring Venezuela.
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Rueda reported from Bogota, Colombia.
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