Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos appointed his former agriculture minister as the government’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the country’s second-largest rebel group, the ELN.
Juan Camilo Restrepo, 70, was agriculture minister between 2010 and 2013, but stepped down amid major strikes in the country’s iconic coffee sector and increased criticism over his department’s inability to return farmland that was stolen during the war to its rightful owners.
Colombia’s obstacles for peace: returning the 15% of national territory that was stolen in the war
Santos made his announcement on Sunday during his weekly address to the nation.
In his address, Santos confirmed that peace talks with the ELN will formally begin on Thursday “if conditions allow it.”
The conditions Santos referred to are two hostages the ELN promised to release ahead of the 27th.
ELN peace talks to begin on October 27, guerrillas vow to release hostages first
“In the course of the week I will inform you about … who will be part of the negotiation team. What I can already say is that the team leader will be former minister Juan Camilo Restrepo.”
President Juan Manuel Santos
The talks with the ELN would be formally inaugurated in the Ecuadorean capital of Quito on Thursday with the actual negotiations beginning one week later on November 3.
At the same time, the Santos administration is renegotiating a peace deal with the FARC, the country’s slightly older and much larger rebel group, in Cuba after the deal signed on November 26 was unexpectedly struck down in a referendum five days later.
Colombia peace deal renegotiated in ‘optimistic environment’
I invite all Colombians, in a patriotic spirit, to work together and reach agreements that unite us, that guarantee there will be no more victims because of the armed conflict and allow all the children of this great nation to begin and reap the fruits of peace.
President Juan Manuel Santos
Restrepo awaits an tough new job, negotiating with a more than 50-year-old rebel group while the state and the guerrillas are still openly at war with each other.
The Colombian state and the Marxist rebels have unsuccessfully tried to make peace through negotiations seven times before and also this time the negotiations have been complex.
Santos first announced talks with the ELN in June 2014, only five days before his successful reelection big.
Formal talks were announced on March 30, but the parties couldn’t agree to a date until last week amid controversy over the guerrillas’ ongoing kidnapping of civilians.
Agreement between Colombia’s national government and ELN rebels
Unlike the FARC, which has a strict hierarchical structure, the ELN has a more horizontal organization, which means many of the group’s decisions must be made in consensus among a larger number of guerrilla representatives, not just the five men making up the group’s central command.