NewsLatin AmericaThe Colombian Ministry of Defense insists on the presence of military personnel at the technical negotiation tables with the ELN

The Colombian Ministry of Defense insists on the presence of military personnel at the technical negotiation tables with the ELN

File – The Minister of Defense of Colombia, Ivan Velasquez. – CHEPA BELTRAN / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO

The Colombian Ministry of Defense has confirmed this Tuesday that the technical negotiating tables with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) will have the presence of soldiers, who in principle will not participate in the next stage of dialogue.

Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez has stressed that the presence of the Armed Forces in the technical stage of the peace talks will be the responsibility of both active military personnel and retired professionals.

“It has been suggested that at least in the first moments of the negotiation, the military should not be at the negotiating table, but at those technical tables,” said the person in charge of defense functions.

However, Velasquez has been open to the idea that, as the negotiations progress, there could “eventually” be some military representation, an idea that clashes head-on with that defended by the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro.

The Colombian president has shown himself on successive occasions against military representatives taking a seat at the table of direct negotiations with the ELN. This matter seems to be one of the first disagreements between the president and a member of his government team.

On the other hand, Velasquez has remarked that dissidence groups such as ‘Segunda Marquetalia’ and other organizations that joined the peace accords with the FARC, and later withdrew from the pact, will be able to join the proposal for ‘total peace’ launched by Petro .

The “total peace” announced by Petro is one of his campaign promises, during which he was questioning the methods of previous governments to put an end to an internal conflict that has been going on for more than half a century.

These new dialogues are aimed at armed groups of a political nature, so the dissident groups of the now extinct FARC, or the paramilitary squads, which the Government has stressed must submit to ordinary justice, could not take advantage of them.

The talks between the ELN and the Government of Colombia broke down in January 2019, after the guerrilla attacked a Police school, leaving around twenty injured and a hundred wounded in response to the refusal of then President Ivan Duque. for advancing, something that has also been reproached with regard to the application of the peace agreements with the FARC.

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