The Colombian Ministry of Defense confirmed on Tuesday that the technical negotiation tables with the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas will include the presence of military personnel, who in principle will not participate in the next stage of the dialogue.
The Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, has stressed that the presence of the Armed Forces in the technical stage of the peace talks will be in charge of both active military and retired professionals.
«It has been proposed that at least in the first moments of the negotiation, the military will not be at the negotiating table, but they will be at the technical tables», said the Minister of Defense.
However, Velásquez has shown himself open to the idea that, as the negotiations advance, there could «eventually» be some military representation, an idea that clashes head-on with what has been defended by the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro.
The Colombian president has on several occasions expressed his opposition to military representatives taking a seat at the direct negotiating table with the ELN. This issue seems to be one of the first disagreements between the president and a member of his government team.
On the other hand, Velásquez has remarked that dissidents such as ‘Segunda Marquetalia’ and other organizations that adhered to the peace agreements with the FARC, and then withdrew from the pact, may join the proposal of ‘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 achieve an end to an internal conflict that has been dragging on for more than half a century.
These new dialogues are aimed at armed groups of a political nature, so that the dissidents of the now extinct FARC, or the paramilitary squads, which the government has stressed will have to submit to the ordinary justice system, will not be able to take part in them.
Talks between the ELN and the Colombian government broke down in January 2019, after the guerrillas attacked a police school, leaving a score of people injured and a hundred wounded in response to then President Iván Duque’s refusal to move forward, something he has also been reproached for regarding the implementation of the peace agreements with the FARC.
