The peace delegation of the guerrilla National Liberation Army on Thursday urged the Colombian government to continue peace negotiations after a bomb attack in which nine soldiers died and nine others were injured.
“We understand pain because we have felt it. All pains count, they are equal,” the ELN said on Twitter without claiming responsibility for the attack. It added that “the realities of war are harsh, for this reason it is necessary to persist in building peace and continue in its process.”
The soldiers were attacked early Wednesday morning with explosives and long-range weapons when they were carrying out security operations at a state-owned Ecopetrol oil pipeline located in the rural area of the municipality of El Carmen, in Norte de Santander, on the border with Venezuela. Eight of the wounded soldiers are recovering in a hospital and one of them has a reserved prognosis.
The army pointed to the ELN, considered the last active guerrilla in the country, as responsible for the attack, despite the fact that the military was not in offensive operations against that armed group.
The attack could complicate President Gustavo Petro’s efforts to achieve “total peace.” Petro called an emergency meeting for next Monday with the government peace delegation in the process with the ELN to evaluate the actions to follow.
Otty Patiño, head of the government’s peace delegation, said on Thursday that they will continue to seek peace with the armed forces. “We will not be the ones who will stop the negotiating table.” However, he added that “the more military actions and harassment they do, the voice of the delegates will be less reliable.”
The negotiation process with the ELN resumed in November last year with the coming to power of Petro, the country’s first left-wing president, after being suspended for three years due to an attack with explosives that claimed the lives of 22 people at a police school in Bogotá, whose authorship recognized the guerrilla.
The current negotiation process It has had two rounds in which the parties advanced in the definition of the road map that the dialogues will follow and in a project to include the communities of territories affected by the conflict to bring them “humanitarian relief.” However, what remains is the definition of a bilateral ceasefire that has been requested by the government and that began to be discussed at the negotiating table so that it may be temporary, national and verified. The third will begin in Cuba in the coming weeks.
After the attack on the military, Patiño assured that the demand for a ceasefire and hostilities is a priority as a condition for civil society to participate in the negotiation process, one of the key points on the agenda. He also pointed out that the ELN has increased its harassment of the civilian population in the departments of Cauca, Arauca, Chocó and Nariño in recent days.
The ELN was founded in 1964 inspired by the Cuban revolution and since then it has sat down to negotiate six times with the State without success. It currently has a presence in more than 200 municipalities and could have between 2,000 and 4,000 members in its ranks, according to the authorities.
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