BOGOTA: Colombia’s Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN) rebels on Tuesday (Jan 3) denied they’d agreed to a six-month ceasefire with the federal government, pouring chilly water on a widely-hailed announcement by President Gustavo Petro.
On New 12 months’s Eve Petro tweeted {that a} truce had been agreed with the nation’s 5 largest armed teams, together with the Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN), pending ongoing peace talks.
However the group insisted in an announcement Tuesday it had “not mentioned any bilateral ceasefire with the Gustavo Petro authorities, due to this fact no such settlement exists”.
Negotiations between the federal government and the ELN, the nation’s final recognised insurgent group, have been beneath method since November.
“We have now stated a number of occasions that the ELN solely carries out that which is mentioned and agreed on the negotiating desk … A unilateral authorities decree can’t be accepted as an settlement,” stated the ELN assertion.
A primary spherical of peace talks since Petro got here to energy in August concluded in Caracas, Venezuela on December 12 with no ceasefire pact.
One other spherical of talks is because of happen in Mexico, though no date has been set.
The ELN stated that “as soon as we now have concluded what’s deliberate, we’re prepared to debate the proposal for a bilateral ceasefire”okay, in reference to the deliberate talks.
In response, the top of the federal government’s negotiating group Otty Patino conceded no ceasefire has but been signed.
“The decree isn’t but legitimate, it has no numbers, it seems as a proposal … Sure it was mentioned (in Caracas), however on the time, nothing conclusive was determined,” he instructed W Radio.
“TOTAL PEACE”
Final month, the ELN introduced a unilateral ceasefire from Christmas Eve to Jan 2.
The federal government then urged different teams to hitch the truce.
In keeping with Petro’s tweet, the federal government had “agreed to a bilateral ceasefire” with the ELN, two dissident splinters of the disbanded FARC guerrilla motion, the Gulf Clan narco group and the Self-Protection Forces of the Sierra Nevada, a rightwing paramilitary group.
The truce would run “from January 1 to June 30, 2023” and was declared “extendable relying on progress within the negotiations.”
The announcement was seen as an vital step within the quest of Colombia’s first left-wing president for “whole peace” following many years of bloody battle.
The federal government subsequently stated the truce could be monitored by the United Nations, Colombia’s human rights ombudsman and the Catholic Church.
UN Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres welcomed the event as one “that brings renewed hope for complete peace to the Colombian individuals because the New 12 months dawns”.
100 MASSACRES
Colombia has suffered greater than 50 years of armed battle between the state and varied teams of left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
Regardless of a peace pact that noticed FARC guerrillas disarm in 2017, armed teams stay locked in lethal disputes over drug trafficking revenues and different unlawful companies, in line with the suppose tank.
Colombia is the world’s largest cocaine producer.
Negotiations between the federal government and armed teams which have an estimated mixed whole of 15,000 fighters, have to date failed to finish a spiral of violence engulfing the nation.
The Indepaz analysis institute recorded practically 100 massacres in Colombia final yr.
Official estimates are that some 3,500 ELN fighters are current in 22 of Colombia’s 32 departments.
In pursuit of Petro’s “whole peace,” the federal government is providing the teams “benevolent remedy from the judicial viewpoint,” Senator Ivan Cepeda just lately instructed AFP.
This may be in alternate for “a give up of property, a dismantling of those organizations and the chance that they cease exercising these illicit economies.”
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