The Colombian government and the FARC’s main dissident group agreed to resume a bilateral ceasefire suspended in May following a massacre of an indigenous community by former guerrillas, the parties reported today, as they near the start of peace talks.
The ceasefire, whose start date was not specified, “will aim to reduce confrontations and violence,” said the emissaries of President Gustavo Petro and alias Iván Mordisco, the head of the so-called Central General Staff (EMC), in a statement Rebels rejected the 2016 peace deal, AFP news agency reported.
The text simply stated that it would be of a “temporary”, “national” nature and that measures would be developed “to promote the participation of civil society in the peace process” and “to build trust”.
Delegates have been meeting since Thursday in the mountains of the Cauca department (southwest), as part of the first formal meeting between the government and the illegal organization that finances itself through drug trafficking and illegal mining.
Petro had announced a bilateral ceasefire with the country’s five largest armed groups at the stroke of midnight on December 31, but suspended the agreement with the EMC in May when the rebels murdered four young indigenous people who opposed their recruitment.
The president then ordered the armed forces to resume offensive operations in the jungle departments in the south of the country, where the rebel leaders live and where most of their operations are based.
The joint statement, signed in a rural area of the municipality of Suárez, added that the parties will soon set up the negotiating table, but did not specify a date or location.
The process is being monitored by other, unspecified countries as well as international organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the World Council of Churches.
In a photo released by the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the head of this unit, Danilo Rueda, is seen together with the official chief negotiator Camilo González Posso and the person in charge of the EMC dialogues, alias Andrey.
The guerrilla leader, who can be seen in the picture in civilian clothes and wearing a cap, had made the start of peace negotiations dependent on the ceasefire coming into force again.
Petro is trying to find a negotiated solution to six decades of armed conflict through peace negotiations with all groups outside the law.
Since November, he has been holding talks in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), the oldest in the Americas after the disarmament of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Negotiator González told AFP in July that talks with the EMC, which according to official figures had around 3,500 members in 2022, would take place on Colombian territory. (Telam)