The government’s peace negotiators told Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro can’t negotiate peace with a dissident ELN front and their superiors at the same time.
Petro’s decision to negotiate peace with dissident ELN guerrillas from the southwest of Colombia has made talks with the guerrillas’ top commanders “legally and politically unfeasible,” his negotiators said in a statement.
It is clear that the national government cannot advance a negotiation process in two instances with the same organization; in this case, a national dialogue table as the one that exists today with the ELN and another in a process with a guerrilla front. Such a circumstance is legally and politically unfeasible.
Government negotiators
According to the negotiators, the president will have to either abandon talks with the ELN or negotiate peace with the dissident “Comuneros del Sur” front from the Nariño province as a separate organization.
Why peace talks with Colombia’s ELN rebels are so difficult
The commander of the Comuneros del Sur, Gabriel Yepes, told political news website La Silla Vacia in September last year that he had the autonomy to “propose a peace process from the region” parallel to the peace talks held between the government and the ELN’s central command.
“With all due respect, we don’t feel represented there. We have always been guerrillas whose fronts were very autonomous,” the dissident ELN commander told La Silla Vacia.
The government’s decision to initiate talks with the Comuneros del Sur in Nariño effectively froze talks between the government and the ELN’s central command in February, the guerrilla chiefs said earlier this month.
Colombia’s ELN guerrillas say peace talks have been “frozen”
Petro’s move now threatens to end the formal talks that began under former President Juan Manuel Santos in 2017 already.
The president did not immediately respond to his delegates’ objections to the current situation.
