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Colombia’s authorities and its largest remaining guerrilla group agreed Friday to a six-month cease-fire at talks in Cuba, within the newest try and resolve a battle courting again to the Nineteen Sixties.
The federal government and the Nationwide Liberation Military, or ELN, introduced the accord at a ceremony in Havana attended by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, high guerrilla commander Antonio García and Cuban officers. The cease-fire takes impact in phases, goes absolutely into impact in August after which lasts for six months.
“This effort to search for peace is a beacon of hope that conflicts may be resolved politically and diplomatically,” high insurgent negotiator Pablo Beltrán mentioned on the ceremony.
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The talks initially had been scheduled to conclude with an official ceremony on Thursday, however had been postponed because the events requested for added time to work on ultimate particulars. Petro traveled to the island for the ceremony, saying it may herald an “period of peace” in Colombia.
The accord reached Friday additionally requires the formation of a broadly consultant nationwide committee by late July to debate an enduring peace.
“You could have right here proposed a bilateral settlement, and I agree with that, however Colombian society must be ready debate it, and to take part,” Petro mentioned throughout the ceremony.
García, the insurgent commander, mentioned his group was “very assured” within the accord, although he characterised it as “procedural” and never but the “substantial” type wanted “for Colombia to vary.”
The Colombian authorities has agreed to a six-month ceasefire with the Nationwide Liberation Military, its largest remaining guerrilla group. (AP Photograph/Ramon Espinosa)
Negotiations between the perimeters had resumed in August, after being terminated in 2019 when the rebels set off a automotive bomb at a police academy in Bogotá, killing 21 people.
Following that incident, the federal government of then-President Iván Duque (2018-2022) issued arrest warrants for ELN leaders in Cuba for the peace negotiations. However Cuba refused to extradite them, arguing that doing so would compromise its standing as a impartial nation within the battle and break with diplomatic protocols.
Talks relaunched in November shortly after Petro was elected as Colombia’s first leftist president.
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Petro has pushed for what he calls a “complete peace” that may demobilize all the nation’s remaining insurgent teams in addition to its drug trafficking gangs. He has questioned whether or not senior ELN leaders have full management of a youthful technology of commanders who he has advised are centered extra on the unlawful drug commerce than on political targets.
The ELN was based within the Nineteen Sixties by union leaders, college students and clergymen impressed by the Cuban revolution. It’s Colombia’s largest remaining insurgent group and has been notoriously tough for earlier Colombian governments to barter with.
In 2016, Colombia’s authorities signed a peace take care of the bigger FARC group that ended 5 many years of battle during which an estimated 260,000 folks had been killed.
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However violence has continued to have an effect on rural pockets of the nation the place the ELN has been energetic, together with FARC holdout teams and drug trafficking gangs. Colombian authorities have accused the ELN of involvement within the drug trafficking, however the group’s high leaders have denied that.
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