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Colombian President Gustavo Petro decided to bring forward the meeting that was scheduled for next week with his official delegation in charge of negotiating peace with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN). The meeting seeks to evaluate the most recent warlike actions of the guerrilla group —for which they recently spoke out— and to decide on new strategies to achieve a bilateral ceasefire that allows the peace process that they have been advancing for five months to continue.
Gustavo Petro advanced the meeting for this friday march 31 with the government delegation that is negotiating peace with the ELN, which was originally scheduled for Monday of next week.
The meeting was called immediately by the president after learning that the ELN was responsible for carrying out an attack against an Army battalion, which left nine dead and nine wounded in the Catatumbo region, in the northeast of the country.
The meeting will take place on Friday afternoon at the Casa de Nariño, the presidential headquarters in Bogotá, and will include the participation of all the members of the delegation in charge of negotiating the cessation of hostilities with the ELN.
There, it is expected that the most recent events and the security situation with the oldest active guerrilla in the country will be evaluated, with which the government has been conducting peace negotiations since November of last year.
Some negotiations that are carried out in the middle of the war, since the guerrillas have not stopped their repeated warlike actions against the Military Forces and the civilian population.
Until now, Government representatives have expressed their intention to maintain the dialogue tables. However, they have stressed the need to agree “urgently” on a bilateral ceasefire.
The negotiating representative of the Government, Otty Patiño, affirmed that for now your delegation will remain at the table, but he energetically criticized the actions carried out by the ELN and questioned its true intentions for peace.
“The ELN claims to abide by International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and yet the hostilities against the population continue. There are many attitudes of the ELN in its desire to dominate territories that undertake it against the civilian population and of course commit this type of arbitrariness and violations of International Humanitarian Law,” Patiño told the local media. Blue Radio.
The peace talks with the ELN are part of “total peace,” the ambitious plan with which the government of leftist Gustavo Petro seeks to all outlaw groups operating in the country finally cease their illegal activities.
The ELN’s response to the attack
More than 24 hours after the attack, the guerrilla group spoke, assuring that they understand the “pain” derived from the event and expressed their intention to continue with the dialogues that have already completed two rounds, one in Mexico and another in Venezuela.
We understand pain because we have felt it. All pains count, they are equal. The realities of war are hard, for this reason it is necessary to persist in the construction of peace and continue in its process.#Peace #THE N
– ELN Delegation (@DelegacionEln) March 30, 2023
But, despite the trill of the delegation, this Thursday the Omar Gómez Western War Front, which operates in the department of Chocó, on the border with Panama; issued a statement in which the authority of the ELN negotiating delegation is questioned.
“We do not view this peace process favorably and every day we have more questions and uncertainties. Actions are needed more than words, speeches and good intentions,” they argued, after accusing the government of not generating the “structural” changes that they believe necessary.
Several times there has been talk about the division that exists within the criminal organization and experts agree that this is one of the greatest challenges that the Government will have to advance the negotiations, since the ELN does not have a vertical command, but each cell has autonomy in its decisions.
For this reason, it is questionable whether alias Pablo Beltrán, head of the ELN negotiating delegation, achieves unity in the event that an agreement is reached between the two parties.
Petro seeks to promote dialogue within Venezuela’s politics
One of the first actions that President Petro took upon coming to power in August of last year was to restore diplomatic relations with his neighboring country, Venezuela, which had been tense for more than a decade and totally broken for three years.
But his management did not stop only in restoring relations, but in seek a way out of the social, economic and, above all, political crisis that Venezuela is experiencing.
For this reason, Petro has sought to take the dialogues that are taking place between the Chavista government and the opposition from Mexico to Colombia.
Negotiations between the two parties seem to have been at a standstill for almost four months, for which reason Petro has expressed his intention to bring the negotiations to his country and “give impetus to the process.”
Recently, the Colombian ambassador in Venezuela, Armando Benedetti, expressed to the United States the intentions of the Bogotá plan to find a date for some presidential elections in Venezuela in 2024.
However, this might not be so easy, since many of the Chavista negotiators are sanctioned by the United States, in addition to a notorious distance between the opposition and President Petro.
With EFE and local media
