He peace dialogue carried out by the Colombian government and the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) was compromised this Wednesday after the guerrilla attack in the Catatumbo region that killed nine soldiers and left nine more wounded.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s reaction before the gunfire and explosives attack was to demand consultations with the government delegation negotiating with the ELN. “I called the government delegation to the ELN table, the Guarantor and the accompanying countries for consultation. A peace process must be serious and responsible with Colombian society,” the President announced in a message on his Twitter account. This call “does not mean a freeze on dialogues”, declared the Presidency, nor that the government would “leave the table”, but it does imply a meeting next Monday “with negotiators and guarantor countries to take decisions on the current facts”.
The army reported that the attack in Guamalito, a hamlet in the municipality of El Carmen, in the department of Norte de Santander, against soldiers of the Special Energy and Road Battalion No. 10 who wanted to conduct patrols to take care of the oil infrastructure, target of endless ELN attacks. A second non-commissioned officer, a third non-commissioned officer and seven conscripts, all young people between the ages of 18 and 25, died in the attack. Regarding the wounded soldiers, the scientific director of the Duarte de Cúcuta Medical Clinic, Marta Isabel Pérez, said that eight of the patients “are in recovery and one of them has a cautious prognosis”.
Petro had already blamed the attack on “those who are absolutely far from peace and people today”, without referring to the ELN, but implying it The attack could have consequences at the dialogue table. For his part, Defense Minister Iván Velásquez told the press that the attack was an act that “does very little for peace.”
no truce
The ELN has carried out further attacks on public forces in Catatumbo and Arauca department since it resumed talks with the government in November, but today is the most serious of all.
The peace talks are taking place at a traveling table that has already transited through Caracas, Mexico and is expected to move into Havana after Easter if nothing changes after what happened.
Despite the government’s insistence in these talks was not agreed armistice, one of the points that attracted the most attention in the Mexico Round and of which there is little more than an “architecture” to achieve “a bilateral termination of a national nature with the possibility of an extension”, according to the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Wheel. “The continuation of violence benefits the interests of the conflict. The ELN does not listen to the people: Communities across Colombia want peace with social justice and for the brothers to stop seeing each other as enemies,” the Alto Commissioner’s office said in a statement.
On the other hand, the head of the Colombian government’s delegation to the peace talks with the ELN, Otty Patiño, assured today that he would seek a ceasefire with the guerrillas in order to move forward on other negotiating issues. “My position at the meeting that we will have with the President on Monday will be to promote the call for a ceasefire and hostilities as a necessary condition to encourage civil society participation in this process and the development of relief efforts in areas where this being the case, advancing the ELN may disrupt or affect humanitarian actions and dynamics,” Patiño said in a statement.
The chief government negotiator regretted that in addition to these attacks the guerrilla harassed the civilian population of the shaken departments of Cauca, Arauca, Chocó and Nariño “in flagrant violation of the norms of international humanitarian law” to which it claims to adhere. “This damages public confidence in the ELN’s will for peace and deeply damages the cordiality of the talks and the implementation of the agreements,” he added.
broad rejection
Various political sides condemned the attack, including Interior Minister Alfonso Prada, who assured that “there is always an option to get up from a table when there are no conditions for dialogue” or “to suspend a ceasefire and order a total offensive where there is no real one.” there is a will for peace”.
Senator Iván Cepeda, one of the government’s chief negotiators and President of the Peace Commission, asserted that “we will not promote peace by bombing soldiers or by the ELN blowing up oil pipelines”. The disapproving voices were joined by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, who declared: “Violence in all its manifestations undermines efforts to consolidate peace.”