AFP, AP and Prensa Latina
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, September 19, 2024, p. 26
Bogotá. The Colombian government announced on Wednesday the suspension of peace negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN), a day after an attack by that group against a military base that left two soldiers dead and 29 wounded in the northeast of the country.
The peace dialogue process is suspendedthe government delegation at the dialogue table reported on the social network X, assuring that the conversations will only be resumed If there is an unequivocal manifestation of the will for peace of the insurgent group.
The day before yesterday, a truck loaded with homemade explosives was detonated in front of an army battalion in the town of Puerto Jordán, in the northern department of Arauca, bordering Venezuela.
Leftist President Gustavo Petro gave the same day an X rating to the attack action that closes a peace process with blood. Yesterday he said that this armed group has seen its capabilities reduced in recent years and hopes that the crisis in Venezuela I can give him air.
The president, who is trying to defuse the six-decade-old armed conflict by holding talks with guerrillas and criminal gangs, visited injured uniformed personnel who are being treated at the Military Hospital in Bogotá, where they were transferred from Arauca.
It is the latest episode in an escalation of attacks by the ELN against official targets since the beginning of August, when it decided not to resume a truce that had been in place since 2023, agreed upon in the talks held since the previous year.
The guerrilla then pointed out non-compliances of the government of the agreements signed in the negotiations carried out since the end of 2022 in Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico.
That same month, Defense Minister Iván Velásquez announced the resumption of the military offensive against the ELN, which aggravated the crisis, while Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo indicated earlier that negotiations were at risk after the attack.
Today we have practically a conversation, a negotiation, dialogues that have not existed for several weeks.Cristo commented in an interview with Blu Radio.
Velasquez warned that the efforts of the military forces They are going to redouble against the guerrillas, which have some 5,800 members, according to military intelligence. His ministry offered a reward equivalent to almost 95 thousand dollars for information on the whereabouts of the top leaders of that guerrilla.