Colombia, ELN rebels set to begin peace talks next week

The Colombian government and left-wing guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN) are set to restart peace talks to end nearly 60 years of war next week, the government said. President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 insurgency who took office in August, has promised to bring "total peace" to the Andean country via negotiations with rebels and crime gangs.

The Colombian government and left-wing guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN) are set to restart peace talks to end nearly 60 years of war next week, the government said.

President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 insurgency who took office in August, has promised to bring "total peace" to the Andean country via negotiations with rebels and crime gangs. "Yes, that's it," Petro told journalists outside a military airport, when asked about the talks and the government's negotiating team.

Colombian media reported he also confirmed talks, whose restart was announced last month, will begin on Monday, while a government source told Reuters it will be next week. Previous attempts at negotiations with the ELN, which has some 2,400 combatants and is accused of financing itself through drug trafficking, illegal mining and kidnapping, have not advanced partly because of dissent within its ranks.

Initial talks between the ELN and the government of Juan Manuel Santos began in Ecuador, later moving to Cuba, but were called off in 2019 by Santos' successor Ivan Duque because the ELN refused to halt hostilities and killed 22 police cadets in a Bogota bomb attack. Much of the ELN's negotiating team is older than many of its members and it is unclear how much sway they hold over units operating deep in Colombia's countryside.

Petro has also promised to fully implement a 2016 peace deal with the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels, as well as to seek de-arming of crime gangs in exchange for reduced sentences and information about drug trafficking. The peace deal ended the FARC's role in the conflict but fighting continues across much of Colombia between the ELN, FARC fighters who reject the accord, crime gangs and the military.

Colombia's conflict, which has run for nearly six decades, killed 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

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