Cepeda reported that during a meeting with the spokespersons of the armed group, some steps were agreed to start the talks.
In 2016, Colombia signed a peace agreement with the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)which led to exploring the possibility of similar approaches with the ELN.
However, peace talks with the ELN collapsed in 2019, after the guerrilla group detonated a bomb inside a police school in Bogotá, killing 32 people.
Last Friday, President Gustavo Petro announced that he would resume dialogue with the ELN in fulfillment of a campaign promise, after meeting in Cuba with a guerrilla delegation with the aim of advancing in the peace negotiations.
The Colombian delegation is headed by Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva and integrated by the high commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, and Cepeda, whom Petro commissioned to establish the first contact of the new government with the insurgent organization to advance with the peace negotiation.
The decision to resume talks was celebrated by a spokesman for the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterreswho praised “the efforts of President Gustavo Petro to deepen and broaden peace in Colombia and offered the support of the United Nations for the success of that effort.”
The idea, the Petro government announced, is to resume the talks at the point where they were left when his conservative successor suspended them, Ivan Dukeafter the attack on the General Santander Cadet School.
Prior to the announcement, the first left-wing president of Colombia, who took office on August 7, had said that he hoped that the rapprochement would not only be with the ELN, “but with all the groups that today exercise violence in the country,” to stop the violence.
Source: Ambito
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