Colombia: Petro announces first agreement with ELN guerrillas.
Negotiations with the guerrilla group were interrupted in 2019 by the far-right government, and resumed by Petro after he came to power in August of this year.
Sputnik - Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on Saturday (3) the conclusion of an agreement between his government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group on the return of displaced indigenous refugees in the west of the country. It is the first since the opening of peace negotiations between Bogotá and the guerrillas.
"The first point of agreement we reached with the ELN, just one week after the start of negotiations, is to allow those displaced by this organization to return to their lands," the president said.
Petro did not specify the return date for these communities that fled the territories they legally occupied in the regions of Choco, in the northwest of the country, and Risaralda, in the center-west, because of the violence between drug traffickers, paramilitary groups, and guerrillas of the ELN, the last recognized guerrilla group in Colombia.
Negotiations with the ELN, which were interrupted in 2019 by the previous government in response to an attack that killed 22 people, were reopened by President Petro, the first leftist president in Colombia's history, who came to power in August of this year. Representatives of the government and the ELN began the new negotiations on November 21 in Venezuela.
The government and the ELN did not agree to a ceasefire, but agreed to resume all agreements and progress achieved since 2016. In recent weeks, both sides have made promises of confidence with the release of prisoners or the reduction of operations.
After negotiations were suspended in 2019, the ELN's membership grew from 1.800 to 2.500 members, according to official estimates.
Founded in 1964 by trade unionists and students sympathetic to Ernesto "Che" Guevara and the Cuban revolution, the ELN remains the last constituted guerrilla group still active in Colombia, while the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement in 2016.
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