The end of the third round of negotiations held in Havana between the Colombian government and the far-left guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), with the signing of a possible ceasefire six-month fire, has been postponed for a day, the two parties announced on Thursday.
“We have requested an additional day from the President of the Republic Gustavo Petro and the first commander of the National Liberation Army (ELN) Antonio Garcia, for the holding of the closing ceremony of the third cycle of the Peace Dialogue platform in order to to finalize the final details of the texts of the Cuba Accords and its respective protocols,” they said in a joint statement, hours before the start of the originally scheduled ceremony.
The Colombian president announced on Wednesday that he would travel to Havana to preside over the final session of the third round of talks, which began on May 2 in Havana, to “sign a document that could signify the beginning without turning back of a era of peace” for the country.
On Thursday, the Colombian High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, quoted in a statement from the presidency in Bogota, said that “there will be a ceasefire (with the ELN) of a national character”, emphasizing ” the climate of absolute confidence and security” prevailing in the negotiations between the two parties.
It is “the first time that the ELN, during the various peace processes with different governments, has concluded a bilateral agreement for six months”, he added, specifying that “monitoring and verification” mechanisms of the agreement will be put in place in the “coming days and weeks”.
These statements come a few days after the suspension by the Colombian public prosecutor’s office of the arrest warrant issued against Antonio Garcia, leader of the ELN.
Under the leadership of Mr. Petro, the country’s first left-wing president and ex-guerrilla, the Colombian government has been negotiating since the end of 2022 with the ELN, the last guerrilla formed as such still active in Colombia.
Talks began in November in Caracas before continuing in March in Mexico City where the two sides pledged to discuss a ceasefire. The death of nine Colombian soldiers at the end of March in an ELN ambush then raised doubts about the continuation of the negotiations.
Talks with the ELN began in 2018, already in Havana, under the government of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) but his successor, the conservative Ivan Duque (2018-2022) ended them in 2019 after an attack bloody against a police school (22 dead).
Mr. Duque then reactivated the arrest warrants against the negotiators of the armed group and asked Cuba for their extradition, which Havana refused. This refusal prompted then-US President Donald Trump to blacklist Cuba as a country supporting terrorism.
Discussions resumed after the election in the summer of 2022 of Mr. Petro.
The ELN, which had 5,850 fighters in 2022, according to the authorities, had unsuccessful talks with five governments.
Bloodied by half a century of armed conflict, Colombia has attempted numerous peace negotiations with armed groups. In 2016, a historic agreement, negotiated in Havana, led to the disarmament of the powerful Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and its transformation into a political party.
08/06/2023 19:55:57 – Havana (AFP) – © 2023 AFP