Petro takes the first step towards “full peace” by resuming talks with the NLA

Bogotá, Nov. 20 (EFE). Four years and four months after their last meeting in Havana, the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas will sit down at the table again on Monday, this time in Caracas and with Gustavo Petro as president, to resume peace negotiations.

The last meeting between the two parties was on August 1, 2018 in Havana, during the government of Juan Manuel Santos. This meeting was the sixth round of talks and ended without any agreement being reached, six days before President Ivan Duque came to power, who put the talks on the freezer.

In this new phase of the talks, Cuba and Norway once again become guarantor states alongside Venezuela, which plays a crucial role given its proximity to Colombia and because, according to the Colombian authorities, guerrillas have taken refuge in its territory for years. .

At the moment it is not known what the methodology will be, or whether all the courses will be in Venezuela, nor is there even clarity about the role that countries like Spain or Chile, which have made themselves available to the Colombians, will play. government to make it useful.

The overall composition of the negotiating teams will be known on Monday in Caracas. However, on the government side, Oti Patiño, a former M-19 fighter who will be the head of the negotiating team, and the president of the Colombian Cattlemen’s Federation (Videgan), José Félix Lafore, a sworn enemy of the revolutionaries, are confirmed.

Likewise, it is rumored that Congresswoman María José Pizarro, daughter of Carlos Pizarro, the M-19 leader who signed those gangs’ layoffs and was assassinated in 1990 when he was running for president; and Ivan Cepeda, a senator and advocate for peace talks.

Alongside the National Liberation Army, of which the government said it already has representatives, is Israel Ramírez Pineda, nicknamed “Pablo Beltrán,” second in command of that guerrilla warfare, as head of the delegation.

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Beltran was already the head of the peace delegation for the dialogues initiated by Santos in 2017, which began in Quito and the following year were transferred to Havana.

Left as opposite the army

Since before his accession to the presidency, Petro has emphasized that one of his government’s priorities is “complete peace”, the cornerstone of which lies in the dialogues with the National Liberation Army.

Within this policy, Petro also seeks to reach agreement or submit to justice for other illegal armed groups, such as FARC defectors and criminal gangs.

These talks in Caracas have many characteristics, among which is that they are being resumed in the midst of domestic and international situations that have not occurred before.

One of them is that, for the first time, the National Liberation Army is approaching a dialogue table in which the country is represented by a left-wing government. In previous negotiations, it has done so with governments affiliated with traditional parties or right-wing coalitions.

Those attempts were a counterpart to the governments of César Gaviria in 1991 and 1992; Ernesto Samper (1998), Andrés Pastrana (1999), and between 2005 and 2007 were performed in exploratory stages in Cuba and Venezuela with the government of Alvaro Uribe.

This situation “can open up opportunities, but also generate tensions regarding how the resolution of structural issues and the end of armed conflict is envisaged,” according to a recent analysis by the Foundation for Peace Ideas (FIP), an independent think tank.

“The environment is favorable, but it is not exempt from the complexities that have accompanied the rapprochement with this guerrilla war,” says the International Federation of Journalists, which states that the ELN is not an entirely hierarchical organization and that decisions are taken by consensus.

Bilateral and augmented guerrilla warfare

The National Liberation Army, which was born in Colombia in 1964 following the example of the Cuban Revolution, has undergone changes: the most important of which is that it has managed in recent years to become a binational armed movement by strengthening its presence in Venezuela.

Knowing that part of its power depends on obtaining resources to fund its illegal activities, the ELN has a strong presence in the border areas of the two countries.

It also has a strong influence in the main resource extraction regions, in addition to having some of its leaders in Venezuela.

“This is a bi-national challenge that requires a bi-national response, understanding the differences in their modus operandi, their organisation, and their relationship to institutions and territorial control on both sides of the border,” the IFJ report said.

Ovid Castro Medina

(c) EFE Agency