Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Monday said he hopes to initiate peace talks with the country’s second largest rebel group ELN “sooner rather than later.”
This is the first time that Santos has publicly expressed such a strong interest in conducting discussions with the ELN. For their part, the rebel group have said on a number of occasions that they are ready to talk about peace.
The rebel leader, alias “Gabino” said that the possibility of peace talks between the ELN and the government had not been discussed, and therefore he was unable to say how ELN discussions would compare to the current negotiations in Havana.
The president’s recent announcement may have been prompted by the apparent progress of the FARC peace process. Santos himself said that a peace agreement could be a matter of months away.
MORE: ‘We cannot and should not be divided by peace’: Santos
President Santos on Monday referred to the “difficult decision” he made in initiating a peace process with the rebel group FARC, highlighting a number of conditions he had established before opening negotiations, indicating how a similar process with the ELN could work.
The ELN is Colombia
PROFILE: ELN