The Government of Colombia and the National Liberation Army (ELN) They made official this Friday the resumption of the peace negotiations in Cuba, stopped since 2019.
The announcement was made in Havana by the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, in the El Laguito protocol room.
This is the same place where the two frustrated conversations with the ELN and those with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were held. that culminated in the 2016 peace agreement. Despite the fact that Chile had offered to host the new talks.
“Both parties agree on the need to start the dialogue process” to demonstrate the “real will” of the Colombian government and the ELN to seek “total peace,” “stable, lasting and sustainable,” said Rueda.
He also assured that the South American government “recognizes the legitimacy of the dialogue delegation” of the guerrilla. In addition to verifying that the ELN listens to “the voices of multiple sectors of society (…) that are clamoring for a negotiated solution to the armed conflict.”
Rueda is part of the Colombian delegation, led by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva, who left for Havana on Thursday and also includes Senator Iván Cepeda, as reported by Efe.
Before the press conference, the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, met at the Palace of the Revolution -headquarters of the Executive- with Cepeda, Leyva and Rueda, with members of the ELN, as well as with the guarantors of Cuba and Norway , representatives of the UN Secretary General and the Colombian Episcopal Conference.
“I ratified to all the participants in the meeting the invariable commitment of Cuba and the unwavering will to continue contributing to the achievement of the desired peace for Colombia,” the president wrote on Twitter.
To this was added the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, who supported the decision of the Colombian Government on Friday.
Guterres celebrated through a spokeswoman “President (Gustavo) Petro’s efforts to deepen and expand peace in Colombia.”
Petro promised to resume peace negotiations
The resumption of the peace talks was one of the campaign promises of President Gustavo Petro, who just took office last Sunday.
Petro, in addition, reaffirmed at the beginning of the week that he would seek to resume the peace talks.
The idea of reactivating the dialogue table with the insurgent group had already been concocted even before the formal start of his Government.
In an interview with Efe in May, Petro assured that he wanted to resume the peace plan of former President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018).
This would not only include the resumption of negotiations with the ELN but also the implementation of the agreement signed with the FARC.
The agreement with the ELN, he stressed in that conversation, “It was left halfway but it would have to be accelerated and it could, depending on the ELN, recreate the climate of peace and democratic progress.”
When the then leftist candidate triumphed in June in the second round of the presidential election, the guerrillas had shown signs of wanting to sit down at the table again.
“(The ELN) maintains its system of struggle and political and military resistance active, but also its full willingness to advance in a Peace Process that gives continuity to the Table of Conversations that began in Quito in February 2017,” said the armed group. it’s a statement.