Colombia's ELN rebel group favours bilateral ceasefire if peace talks resume

Record ID: 1688997

  • Title: Colombia's ELN rebel group favours bilateral ceasefire if peace talks resume
  • Date: 14th September 2022
  • Summary: HAVANA, CUBA (SEPTEMBER 14, 2022) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) COLOMBIA'S NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY (ELN) REPRESENTATIVE, PABLO BELTRAN, SAYING: "We have released the soldiers and police officers that we had detained. How to understand that? As a greeting and a willingness to dialogue with the new government. The actions we have carried out lately are exceptional. In other words, at this moment, so to speak, we are not in an offensive plan, we are in a defensive plan. Look, it is a positive and constructive attitude, to tell the government, 'well, we hope to resume the negotiations'. That is the current attitude of the ELN."
  • Embargoed: 28th September 2022 22:31
  • Keywords: Colombia Cuba ELN Guerrilla Peace talks Rebels
  • Location: HAVANA, CUBA & UKNOWN JUNGLE REGION, COLOMBIA
  • City: HAVANA, CUBA & UKNOWN JUNGLE REGION, COLOMBIA
  • Country: Cuba
  • Topics: South America / Central America,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA006541714092022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) favors a bilateral ceasefire to pave the way for renewed peace talks, the leftist guerilla group´s top negotiator told Reuters in Havana on Wednesday (September 14), and said the rebels would be united upon returning to the bargaining table.
    Pablo Beltran, who leads the ELN´s delgation in Cuba, said he and other delegates in Havana since talks collapsed in 2019 would return home in the coming weeks - given proper assurances of safety - and together with comrades in the jungle fine tune their strategy ahead of coming negotiations.
    The soft-spoken Beltran, who fought with the ELN both in urban and rural combat in Colombia, said a previous bilateral ceasefire in 2017 was "positive" and should be "repeated."
    "We are not in an offensive plan," he told Reuters in a leafy, quiet neighborhood just outside Havana.
    The election of leftist President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, helped open the door to the new talks. Petro has promised to seek "total peace" by fully implementing a 2016 peace deal with the now-demobilized FARC rebels and dialoguing with crime gangs.
    Sceptics, however, question whether the ELN, founded in 1964 by radical Catholic priests and long seen as unpredictable and divided among several fronts, can strike a deal with government negotiators.
    Beltran dismissed those concerns.
    On Tuesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro agreed Venezuela would serve as a guarantor at the negotiations, a key step, Beltran said, in allowing ELN negotiators in Cuba to reunite with fellow rebel leaders still operating in Colombia and along the Venezuelan border.
    After that, talks with the government, he said, could resume in as little as "a few weeks."
    Previous attempts at negotiations with the ELN, which has some 2,400 combatants and is accused of financing itself through drug trafficking, illegal mining and kidnapping, have not advanced partly because of dissent within its ranks.
    (Production: Mario Fuentes, Anett Rios, Bernat Parera)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2022. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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