Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said Monday that peace talks with guerrilla group ELN “are about to be resumed.”
Before taking office on Sunday, the president had already said that he would continue the talks that were suspended by former President Ivan Duque
“In the coming weeks” Petro will know “if these talks will continue in Cuba” where ELN negotiators remained after the suspension, said the president after a meeting with his Chilean counterpart Gabriel Boric.
Chile is a guarantor of the process carried out in Havana, Cuba, and we hope that it will continue to be a guarantor in the processes that are about to be resumed.
President Gustavo Petro
Apart from possibly revising the location of the talks, Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva will be talking to other guarantor countries about their future role in the talks, said the president.
The formal talks with the ELN kicked off under former President Juan Manuel Santos in 2017, but were suspended after Duque took office in 2018.
ELN negotiator “Antonio Garcia” said on Twitter that “we’ll have to look how to continue considering what has been agreed” between the guerrillas and the Santos administration.
The planned resumption of the peace talks with Colombia’s longest-living guerrilla group is part of Petro’s “Total Peace” policy that seeks the demobilization of multiple illegal armed groups.
Colombia’s incoming government begins “total peace” offensive
Paramilitary organization AGC, which was also negotiating a possible demobilization with Santos, announced an immediate and unilateral ceasefire on Sunday “as an expression of goodwill.”
The largest group formed by dissidents of the now-defunct guerrilla group FARC last week released a video in which they also said to be willing to negotiate their demobilization and disarmament.
In his inaugural address, Petro on Sunday called on “all the armed groups to lay down their arms in the mists of the past, to accept legal benefits in exchange for peace, in exchange for the definitive non-repetition of violence.”
We will work tirelessly to bring peace and tranquility to every corner of Colombia. This is the government of life, of peace, and it will be remembered as such.
President Gustavo Petro
The new government’s peace policy is a 180-degree turn with that of Duque, who refused to engage in talks with any of the illegal armed groups that are causing much of the violence in Colombia.
