Colombia, ELN rebels resume peace talks in Mexico after ceasefire confusion

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Colombia’s authorities and the Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN) insurgent group resumed peace talks in Mexico Metropolis on Monday after a brief halt attributable to a misunderstanding over a mooted ceasefire.

Mexico is without doubt one of the guarantor nations for the talks, together with Norway, Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil and Chile. The primary spherical of discussions to finish the guerrillas’ half in almost six many years of conflict happened in Caracas final November.

On New 12 months’s Eve, President Gustavo Petro had introduced {that a} ceasefire had been agreed with the ELN and different insurgent teams.

However a couple of days later the ELN stated it was merely a proposal that had not been agreed to. The federal government blamed the confusion on a misunderstanding of the ELN’s place.

The ELN is Colombia’s oldest remaining insurgent group, based by radical Catholic monks in 1964, and the talks are the cornerstone of efforts by leftist Petro – himself a former member of one other rebel group – to deliver “whole peace” to Colombia.

Petro, who took workplace simply over six months in the past, has vowed to barter peace or give up offers with remaining rebels and crime gangs in addition to to totally implement a earlier accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed in 2016.

Negotiations with the ELN beneath earlier administrations faltered on the group’s diffuse chain of command and dissent inside its ranks, although Pablo Beltran, the top of the ELN delegation, and prime commander Antonio Garcia have stated fighters are on board with these talks.

On Monday, leaders of the negotiations on either side stated the talks would concentrate on a bilateral ceasefire and agreements to get humanitarian assist to areas of Colombia most affected by the battle.

“Agreements are to be fulfilled… now we have to supply outcomes,” stated Otty Patiño, head of the Colombian authorities delegation.

Beltran gave an outline of the group’s core grievances, together with the long-standing conflict on medicine, conflict on terrorism, and social inequality.

“The economic system and the state should be positioned on the service of society,” he stated. “That is the principle change for which we battle so that there’s peace with justice.”

(Reporting by Sarah Kinosian; further reporting by Julia Cobb in Bogota, enhancing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Rosalba O’Brien)