Pablo Beltran, top negotiator for the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group, speaks during a news conference in Havana, Cuba May 1, 2023. Portal/Alexandre Meneghini
For this Tuesday May 2nd The third cycle of peace talks between the government of President Gustavo Petro and the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) is scheduled to begin. where there is a big one Expectation that a ceasefire will be reached.
For the insurgent group, if there is a cessation of hostilities, this must be realistic and measurable, according to what the subversives’ chief negotiator, aka Pablo Beltrán, explained.
“We believe we must agree to a fully achievable, measurable and evaluable exit. (…) Provisional cessation, not the end of the conflict. We are interested in it working 100 percent without errors, that it is not so elementary … But also not that it is so heavy and so complex that it is difficult to comply with,” the insurgent claimed.
To achieve this, Beltrán explained: They will start from the experience of a temporary ceasefire implemented by the ELN in 2017 when the Pope visited the country.
The aim is, given that there is so much distrust in Colombian society towards a peace process, can help build confidence for further progress.
This will be the third cycle of talks, after going through Venezuela and Mexico in the previous months, and the objectives of the dialogue table, the continuation of which on the island has been announced since mid-April, They are working on civil society participation in the peace process, humanitarian action and this eventual agreement to end armed action.
Some distrust in the progress of the process grew after Colombian authorities questioned the true political will of the ELN, after a bomb attack on army personnel last March that killed nine uniformed officers.
According to Beltrán, a stock freeze agreement is truly enforceable It will “demonstrate the table’s ability to reach agreements realistically”.
Beltran too He reiterated that in order to get to Cuba, two meetings were held with each separate guerrilla front and a number of parameters were agreed with them to be dealt with in this cycle of the ceasefire agreement. and civil society participation.
The actual The peace process with the ELN resumed in November last year after a hiatus of more than four years when then-President Iván Duque suspended talks initiated by his predecessor Juan Manuel Santos, and after a guerrilla attack on a police academy.
The expectations in this new cycle they are high because the dialogues are going through a critical moment since on March 31st the subversive group carried out an attack on the base of the municipality of Guamalito of the municipality of El Carmen (Norte de Santander), in the 10 soldiers died, eight of them young soldiers doing their military service.
Since then, On the part of this insurgent structure, they have only shown hostility towards the national government, despite insistence on continuing the dialogue.
the subversive boss aka Antonio García has starred in all of these episodes, the first being when he justified on his Twitter account that the aforementioned attack on members of the Public Force was legitimatesince the operations against him had not been stopped.
Self made threatening statements against the journalists María Alejandra Villamizar and Vicky Dávila, which eventually cost him the closure of his profile on this social network, although he later claimed it was just a hoax and not intimidation against the well-known communicators.
(With agency information)