The truce, whose start date was not specified, “will aim to reduce confrontation and violence,” said President Gustavo Petro’s emissaries
The government of Colombia and the main group of FARC dissidents agreed to resume the ceasefire bilateral. The measure had been suspended in May after a guerrilla massacre against an indigenous communityThe parties reported this Saturday that they are close to starting peace talks.
The truce, whose start date was not specified, “will aim to reduce confrontation and violence”said in a statement the emissaries of President Gustavo Petro and alias Iván Mordisco, the head of the Central General Staff (EMC), made up of rebels who rejected the 2016 peace deal. The text only details that will be “temporary”, “national” and that actions will be carried out “tending to promote the participation of civil society in the peace process” and to “build trust.”
The statement adds that the parties the negotiating table will be set up soon, although it does not detail the date or the place. Said process will have the oversight of other countries that were not specified and international organizations such as the UN, the OAS and the World Council of Churches. The delegates have been meeting since Thursday in the mountains of the department of Cauca (southwest), in the first formal meeting between the government and the illegal organization that profits from drug trafficking and irregular mining.
Petro had announced a bilateral truce with the five main armed groups in the country at the stroke of midnight on December 31, but suspended the agreement with the EMC in May, when the rebels murdered four young indigenous people who resisted being recruited. Then the first leftist president of Colombia gave the order to the Military Forces to resume offensive actions in the jungle departments in the south of the country, where the rebel leaders live and where most of their operations are located.
In a photograph released by the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace the head of that entity is observed, Danilo Ruedasmiling next to the official chief negotiator, Camilo Gonzalez Possoand the person in charge of the dialogues of the EMC aka Andrey. The guerrilla leader, who appears in the image dressed as a civilian and with a cap, had conditioned the start of the negotiations on the return to force of the ceasefire. Petro tries a negotiated solution to six decades of armed conflictthrough peace negotiations with all groups outside the law, including the guerrilla the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Source: Ambito
