(Tibú) The Colombian government and the main dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced on Sunday the postponement of a planned ceasefire and peace talks by more than a week, amid growing tensions.
The talks, scheduled to begin Sunday in Tibu on the country’s eastern border, will begin on October 16, reported representatives of President Gustavo Petro and the FARC splinter group known as “EMC-FARC” (for “state”). -major central”) which rejects the peace agreement signed in 2016 with the Marxist guerrillas.
The government’s high commissioner for peace Danilo Rueda also said the bilateral ceasefire, announced last month, would come into force on October 16.
His statements were booed in Tibu, where thousands of people had gone to witness the opening of peace negotiations.
Recent months have been marked by renewed activity by this rebel group against the security forces, which has left at least 22 dead.
The government has regularly condemned these actions, with President Gustavo Petro seeing them in particular as an attempt by dissidents to secure their hold on drug trafficking zones.
EMC dissidents, estimated at nearly 3,500 men at the end of 2022 according to official figures, have brought together in recent months several other “Fronts” operating in various regions of Colombia, formerly occupied by the FARC and also abandoned by government forces.
For his part, warmly applauded in Tibu, a territory where the guerrillas are strongly present, EMC spokesperson Andrey Avendaño estimated that the road to peace with the government would be long.
“We are fully convinced that it is through dialogue and a political solution that we will be able to resolve the various problems,” he said.
Mr. Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president and a former guerrilla himself, is seeking to give dissidents a second chance to lay down their arms after their rejection of the historic 2016 peace deal.
He wants to end six decades of armed conflict by leading peace negotiations with all illegal armed groups: the FARC dissidents, the Guevarist guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), but also paramilitaries and several criminal groups.