(Bogotá) The Colombian ELN guerrilla announced the freezing of peace talks and an “open crisis” with the government, denouncing “violations” of the rules agreed upon in the negotiations launched in 2022.
“Without our responsibility, discussions between the ELN (National Liberation Army) and the national government are entering a freezing phase, until the government is willing to respect its commitments,” indicated the Guevarist guerrilla in a press release dated February 19 and broadcast during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.
She accuses the authorities in Bogota of not having respected the rules agreed at the start of the discussions currently taking place in Cuba.
The guerrillas criticize in particular the establishment of a dialogue with the governor of the department of Narino (southwest), Luis Alfonso Escobar, in parallel with the ongoing talks.
“By making such an arrangement public, disguised as a regional dialogue, the process enters into an open crisis and we are obliged to call for consultations with our delegation of negotiators,” she explains in her press release.
Luis Alfonso Escobar, for his part, told the press on Sunday that discussions in his region should begin the first week of March. He was delighted with this “territorialization of peace”.
The Colombian government did not immediately react.
Truces broken
Last week, however, the ELN gave a token of goodwill by suspending an “armed strike” that it imposed in western Colombia to denounce the “complacency of the public force” with paramilitary groups.
This “armed strike”, which forced thousands of peasants to remain cloistered in their homes, was harshly criticized by the government negotiator and the Catholic Church, two major players in the peace negotiations, with the ELN being accused of not respecting the terms of the truce, then in force since August.
The peace commissioner in charge of the talks for the government had questioned the desire for dialogue of the ELN and the Central Staff (EMC), the main dissidence of the former Marxist guerrilla of the FARC (Armed Forces revolutionaries of Colombia) who signed a historic peace agreement in 2016.
Elected in 2022 as the first left-wing president in the country’s history, Gustavo Petro began discussions with the main armed groups operating in Colombia. This dialogue concerns the ELN, but also FARC dissidents who reject the peace agreement, as well as paramilitary groups and drug traffickers.
Several rounds of negotiations have already taken place in Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba, which act as guarantors with the governments of Brazil, Chile and Norway. Added to these countries are Germany, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, which are accompanying the talks, as well as a representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Present in the west on the Pacific coast and in the northeast bordering Venezuela, the ELN, whose numbers are estimated at 5,800 fighters, has challenged the Colombian state since its birth in 1964 in the wake of the Cuban revolution.