“Peace is our dream, change our path. Government and National Liberation Army (ELN) delegations met with optimism (…) to build peace from a just democracy” , according to the statement read Monday, after the first contact in the morning.
The negotiations should last “three weeks” in the capital of Venezuela, one of the three countries guarantors of the process (along with Cuba and Norway). They bring together around thirty people including the delegates of the first leftist president elected in August in Colombia Gustavo Petro and those of the ELN.
Initiated in 2017 in Cuba, the dialogue was interrupted by conservative President Ivan Duque (2018-2022) after a car bomb attack in June 2019 against a police school (22 dead).
– “Overcoming the dynamics of death” –
This desire to “build peace” is demanded by “the inhabitants who suffer from violence and exclusion”, according to the text which underlines the “necessity” of “permanent and verifiable commitments which sow the seeds of a new culture of peace (…) going beyond political violence and its causes”.
“We view with hope the process that is taking shape today. It is undoubtedly an important step towards the achievement of peace in Colombia”, welcomed the guarantor nations.
Colombian Peace Commissioner Danilo Rueda, appointed by Petro, said Colombia was at “a historic, almost unique moment”.
“The first meeting (…) gives us the certainty and deep conviction that we will achieve the goal that unites us: to be daughters and sons of the same homeland with changes and transformations (..) that will lead us to overcome the dynamics of death (…) to build a nation where we all belong.”
– “Time for change” –
The head of the ELN delegation Pablo Beltran was also optimistic, stressing that the fact that Colombia was led by a “left-wing government” was the “main difference” with the failures of previous negotiations.
“The time for change” has come, he said, “in Colombia we all have to change… Colombians should not see each other as enemies.”
He also swept aside the doubts expressed by many observers who underlined the divisions within the rebellion: “The ELN does not sign what it cannot respect and what it signs, it respects”.
After the suspension of the talks, the membership of the ELN rose from 1,800 to 2,500 members, according to official estimates. The organization has a federated structure with spokespersons on each front, which experts say makes negotiations difficult.
Founded in 1964 by trade unionists and students who sympathized with Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Cuban revolution, the ELN remains to this day the last constituted guerrilla group still active in Colombia, while the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ( FARC) signed a peace accord in 2016.
The government and the ELN did not agree on a ceasefire, but agreed in October to “resume all agreements and progress made since the signing of the agenda” of March 30, 2016. These In recent weeks, they have given “pledges of confidence” to each other, notably with the release of prisoners or the reduction of operations in the field.
Present massively on the Venezuelan border, the ELN has less military power than the disbanded FARC, but its social base, made up of militiamen, is broader and more diversified, according to the researchers.
Mr. Petro, a former guerrilla himself, is working on a “total peace” plan which aims to end all violence in his country after more than 50 years of internal wars.
He affirmed his desire to negotiate with the ELN but also with the dissidents of the ex-FARC (Marxists) who reject the 2016 peace agreement, as well as to discuss with the gangs of drug traffickers their surrender to justice.
On Saturday, clashes between a dissident faction of the FARC and another armed group left 18 dead near the border with Ecuador.
pgf-erc-ba-lab/cn
