The elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said on Tuesday that he will ask the ELN guerrillas to "all armed groups" a "bilateral ceasefire" to start "judicial negotiations in most cases and political negotiations in the minority".
Petro, in an interview with W Radio, sent him a message "not only the ELN (National Liberation Army), but all the armed groups in Colombia: that the time for peace has come".
The president-elect added: "Through various instruments, what I request is a bilateral ceasefire and the beginning of judicial negotiations in most cases and political negotiations in the minority to end the war in Colombia.".
Petro, who belonged during his youth to the guerrilla of the April 19 Movement (M-19) specified that there are groups that "they are the same in practice" and now they are dedicated to "multicrime"but that some were born as "political insurgency".
Therefore, the treatment is different and the "multi-crime gangs" without that insurgent legacy "offers them a judicial negotiation" Y "submission to justice"so it follows that the political negotiations will be held with the ELN, although it did not specify what will happen with the FARC dissidents.
Since Petro won the elections, On June 19, the ELN has reiterated in two communiqués its willingness to resume the peace negotiations that former President Juan Manuel Santos began in 2017 in Quito and took to Havana in 2018 without progress.
With the change of government in 2018, the talks were suspended due to the demand of the current president, Iván Duque, to the ELN of lrelease all the hostages he has in his power and to renounce all its criminal activities related to drug trafficking, illegal mining, attacks on electricity and oil infrastructure, among others.
Subsequently, after an attack by that guerrilla against the Police cadet school in Bogotá in January 2019, which left 22 dead and more than 60 wounded, the Government definitively paralyzed any possibility of dialogue with the ELN.
This same Monday, the head of the ELN, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, alias "Anthony Garcia"assured in a statement that this guerrilla is "ready to resume peace talks with the new government so that their results bring peace with social justice for all of Colombia".