Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Thursday postponed peace talks with National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels just hours before they were due to begin, insisting they first release a former lawmaker being held hostage.
Santos said he remained committed to making peace, but would not budge from his demand for the ELN to first free former Colombian congressman Odin Sanchez “safe and sound.”
The government’s top peace negotiator, Juan Camilo Restrepo, later said an operation was under way for the leftist guerrillas to hand Sanchez over to the Red Cross.
Photo: AFP
However, it was not immediately clear how long it would take.
Restrepo said he believed the handover would be complete by Thursday next week, when the first round of substantive negotiations had been scheduled to begin.
“I reiterate all the government’s readiness and willingness to advance with this process,” Santos said in a speech.
The talks had been scheduled to formally begin at 5pm in Ecuador.
Colombian Minister of the Interior Juan Fernando Cristo said the government was prepared to reschedule to Friday, Saturday “or whenever we are certain that Odin Sanchez has been freed.”
The rebels said on Twitter they “do not share” the decision to postpone.
Hours after the government suspended talks, ELN rebels killed two truck drivers in the country’s northeast in a “terrorist act,” the military said.
“It is simply an act of terrorism against two civilian trucks traveling on the roads of Arauca, which were set on fire and the drivers killed by members of the ELN,” Colombian National Army Colonel Miguel Angel Rodriguez told reporters, referring to the region where the incident took place.
The ELN is the country’s second-largest rebel group after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has been in talks with the government for nearly four years.
The ELN talks were meant to open a new, decisive front in Santos’ efforts to end an armed conflict that has lasted more than half a century and killed more than 260,000 people.
Santos, who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has already signed a peace deal with the FARC, but voters rejected it in a referendum this month — sending negotiators back to the drawing board.
The ELN talks are shaping up to be even trickier.
The ELN had promised to free its hostages before the talks — as the FARC did before starting negotiations with Bogota in 2012.
However, it bristled last week when Restrepo gave it an ultimatum to free Sanchez, accusing him of “torpedoing” the talks.
Sanchez voluntarily went into ELN custody in April to take the place of his brother Patrocinio, a former governor who had fallen ill after three years in captivity. He is being held in the remote, jungle-covered department of Choco.
Sources in the Catholic Church, which has played a part in preliminary negotiations, said the rebels are also holding a doctor named Edgar Torres.
The talks would be the fifth attempt to make peace with the ELN over the years.
The ELN said its negotiating team is already in Quito and ready to begin talks.
The ELN’s head negotiator, Pablo Beltran, said on Twitter that the group was “fulfilling everything that was agreed.”
Like the FARC, the ELN formed in 1964 and is blamed for killings and kidnappings during a many-sided civil war. Both groups have relied on ransom kidnappings and drug trafficking to fund themselves.
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,” Echandia 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 nonfatal explosion at an oil pipeline near the Venezuelan border on Sunday.
Colombian authorities estimate the ELN currently has about 1,500 members, active mainly in the north and west of the country.
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, authorities said.
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