The Colombian government yesterday was due to open talks with the country’s second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), but a down-to-the-wire hostage dispute has kept the nation in suspense.
The talks — if they happen — will open a new front in Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ efforts to bury an armed conflict that has burned for more than half a century and killed more than 260,000 people.
Santos, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has already signed a peace deal with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Photo: AFP
However, voters rejected it in a referendum on Oct. 2, sending the two sides back to the drawing board.
That has only complicated the peace process with the ELN, a more intransigent negotiating partner.
The ELN had promised to free its hostages before the talks opened in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito — as the FARC did before starting negotiations in Cuba in 2012.
However, the ELN bristled last week when the government’s chief negotiator issued an ultimatum to do so.
Since then, there has been no news on the fate of the hostage — or hostages, according to some sources — still being held by the guerrilla group.
That has cast uncertainty on the talks, even as the ELN said its peace negotiators were on their way to Quito.
“Have a good trip,” the rebel group said to them on Wednesday on Twitter, announcing that the delegation would be led by commander Pablo Beltran.
The talks — the fifth attempt to make peace with the ELN — were to open at 5pm.
Like the FARC, the ELN formed in 1964 and is blamed for killings and kidnappings during a messy, multi-sided civil war.
The ELN is still holding at least one hostage, former Colombian congressman Odin Sanchez.
Colombia has “reasonable confidence” that the guerrilla group will release Sanchez, lead government negotiator Juan Camilo Restrepo said.
“We have reasonable confidence because it is the spirit and good faith that encourages the government to start these dialogues,” Restrepo said told an evening news program on Wednesday.
If Sanchez is not released, the process “cannot open because the government’s condition has been very clear and we do not see why it cannot be fulfilled appropriately,” he said.
Sources in the Catholic Church, which has played a part in preliminary negotiations, say the rebels are also holding a doctor named Edgar Torres.
0A church spokesman on Tuesday said that moves were under way to free Sanchez in time.
“All the protocol is being observed and the proceedings are on track,” said Dario de Jesus Monsalve, the archbishop of Cali.
The Red Cross, which usually facilitates hostage handovers in Colombia, on Wednesday said that no such operation was under way.
Analyst Camilo Echandia of Colombia’s Externado University said the ELN was reluctant to accept the release of hostages as a condition for talks.
“That is the big difference between the ELN and the FARC,” he told reporters. “These negotiations are going to be very complicated.”
Incidents involving ELN forces have kept tensions high in recent months.
The Colombian army blamed the ELN for a non-fatal explosion at an oil pipeline near the Venezuelan border on Sunday.
“The ELN guerrilla group comes strengthened to the negotiations with the government. Over the past three years this group has increased its level of violence,” Colombia’s Conflict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC) said in a report this month.
Colombian authorities estimate the ELN has about 1,500 members.
The army says hundreds have deserted or been captured in recent months.
Its activities are restricted mainly to parts of the north and west of the country, according to CERAC.
Like the FARC, the ELN funds itself largely through drug trafficking and ransom kidnappings.
Colombia’s territorial and ideological conflict has drawn in various guerrilla and paramilitary groups, drug gangs and state forces over the decades.
The conflict has forced nearly 7 million people to flee their homes, according to Colombian authorities.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in