This content was published on August 20, 2022 – 9:29 p.m. August 20, 2022 – 9:29 p.m
Bogotá, 20th August (EFE).- Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced this Saturday the suspension of the arrest and extradition warrants against the guerrilla negotiators of the National Liberation Army (ELN) who are in Cuba to launch peace talks.
“I would like to announce that by decree I signed yesterday, I authorized the restoration of the protocols, allowed the negotiators to reconnect, allowed them to reconnect with their organization, suspended the arrest warrants for these negotiators who Suspend extradition orders for these negotiators in order to start dialogue with the National Liberation Army (ELN),” the head of state said.
He added that the order was “to try, hopefully, quickly and expeditiously to build the path by which this organization ceases to be an insurgent guerrilla in Colombia.”
The Colombian government’s negotiations with the ELN began in Quito in 2017, during the government of Juan Manuel Santos, and in 2018 they were moved to Havana, where the main guerrilla leaders are still based, although during the government that then became President Iván Duque finally paralyzed.
He stressed that with the signed resolution suspending the arrest and extradition orders, “a new possibility for a peace process in Colombia begins” that he hopes will “be vigilant with the security forces and the authorities, and in particular bring about a decrease in violence”.
At the end of a security council held in San Pablo, a town in Bolívar department (north), President Petro also “invited” the self-defense groups to join the peace talks.
“I invite those who form the so-called self-defense groups to follow a similar path and work together to bring this region to peace and the lives of its own members,” he said.
THE PROGRESS
Petro’s decision comes after his government’s contacts, through Colombia’s High Commissioner for Peace Danilo Rueda and Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva, with ELN chiefs in Havana, where they were holding meetings.
Prior to these meetings, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez reaffirmed his country’s “unchanging commitment” to “peace in Colombia” and his “will” to continue to contribute to the “gaining of peace”.
For his part, the supreme commander of the ELN, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, aka “Antonio García”, stated in an interview with the news program CM& a few days ago that the peace negotiations should be resumed where they had stalled.
“The one who broke it (the peace negotiations) was the Duque government, now the new government and the Colombian state must be safe from this rupture. It’s the foundation. Therefore (it must be the) starting point to resume talks,” the guerrilla chief said.
Last Wednesday, the ELN released five soldiers and a policeman kidnapped in the Colombian department of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela, in what the guerrillas interpreted as a “goodwill” gesture to resume peace negotiations. EFE
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