Colombia’s government and guerrilla group EMC announced the beginning of preliminary peace talks.
In a joint statement, Peace Commissioner Danilo Rueda and the EMC’s second-in-command, Andrey Abendaño, said that the negotiations began on Saturday.
The talks seek an agreement about formal peace talks between the government and the largest organization of guerrillas who rejected a 2016 peace deal with the now-defunct guerrilla group FARC.
The talks also seek the resumption of a bilateral ceasefire that was partially suspended by President Gustavo Petro in May.
According to Rueda and Abendaño, the talks will be accompanied by representatives of the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the Catholic Church.
Parallel to the talks, the government and the guerrillas agreed to form a “National Team for the Generation of Trust and the Resolution of Contingencies.”
This commission would be in charge of solving disputes while negotiators come to an agreement about a permanent monitoring of a bilateral ceasefire.
Petro suspended the ceasefire that took force in January in response to a guerrilla massacre in the southern Putumayo province.
The suspension reactivated the order to the security forces to attack the EMC in their strongholds in the Putumayo, Caqueta, Guaviare and Meta provinces.
The preliminary talks are the result of almost a year of sporadic contact between the Petro administration and the EMC, which is led by a former FARC commander, “Ivan Mordisco.”
The talks will be held parallel to talks with guerrilla groups ELN and Segunda Marquetalia, paramilitary organizations from northern Colombia, and organized crime group from Medellin and Buenaventura.
The multiple negotiations and the implementation of the peace deal with the FARC are supposed to achieve what the president has called “Total Peace.”
The peace processes that followed the demobilization of paramilitary organization AUC between 2003 and 2006 and the FARC in 2017 have been hampered by violence of groups that either rejected the peace processes or took up arms while these processes were ongoing.