BOGOTÁ (AP) – Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that it will be a matter of days before he publicly proposes a possible multilateral ceasefire with various illegal armed groups operating in his country.
“It would be the beginning of the end of the violence in Colombia … with everyone (the gunmen) clinging to that possibility,” Petro told the press Thursday at the end of his agenda in New York after attending the United Nations General Assembly .
Petro, who was a guerrilla fighter in his youth and gave up arms after a peace deal, has been proposed by the presidency to de-escalate the violence with an ambitious plan he has dubbed “total peace” that would translate into a search for peace dialogues and the subjugation of the guerrilla National Liberation Army (ELN), drug traffickers such as the Clan del Golfo, and the dissidents of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
In his statement, the Colombian President did not specify which armed groups the ceasefire would be concluded with. In the past, he said that the majority of the twenty or so armed forces have informed the government of their intention to engage in dialogue.