(Havana) The Colombian government and the country’s largest remaining guerrilla group agreed to a six-month ceasefire during talks in Cuba on Friday, in the latest attempt to resolve a conflict dating back to the 1960s.
The government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) announced the agreement at a ceremony in Havana attended by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, guerrilla commander-in-chief Antonio García and Cuban officials. The ceasefire is taking effect in phases and will come into full effect in August for six months.
“This effort to seek peace is a beacon of hope that conflicts can be resolved politically and diplomatically,” rebel chief negotiator Pablo Beltrán said at the ceremony.
The talks were originally scheduled to conclude with a formal ceremony on Thursday, but were postponed as the parties requested additional time to work out final details. President Petro traveled to the island for the ceremony, saying it could herald an “era of peace” in Colombia.
Friday’s agreement also calls for the formation of a broadly representative national committee by the end of July to discuss a lasting peace.
“You have proposed a bilateral agreement here, and I agree with that, but Colombian society must be able to debate it and participate in it,” Petro said at the ceremony.
Negotiations between the sides had resumed in August, after being halted in 2019 when rebels detonated a car bomb at a police academy in Bogota, killing 21 people.
Following this incident, the government of then-president Iván Duque issued arrest warrants against the ELN leaders in Cuba for the peace negotiations. But Cuba refused to extradite them, arguing that it would compromise its status as a neutral nation in the conflict and break diplomatic protocols.
The talks were relaunched in November shortly after Mr Petro was elected as Colombia’s first left-wing president.
Mr Petro has been pushing for what he calls a “comprehensive peace” that would demobilize all of the country’s remaining rebel groups as well as its drug trafficking gangs. He questioned whether the ELN’s top leadership had full control of a younger generation of commanders who he said were more focused on drug trafficking than political goals.
The ELN was founded in the 1960s by labor leaders, students and priests inspired by the Cuban revolution. It is the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia and has been notoriously difficult for previous Colombian governments to negotiate with.
In 2016, the Colombian government signed a peace deal with the largest FARC group that ended five decades of conflict in which an estimated 260,000 people were killed.
But the violence continued to affect rural pockets of the country where the ELN fought recalcitrant Clan del Golfo and FARC groups for control of drug trafficking routes and other resources.
With information from Juan Francisco Valbuena in Bogota