BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombian leftist guerrilla group the Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN) is open to advancing peace talks with the incoming authorities of President-elect Gustavo Petro, it stated on Monday, and known as for reforms to deal with social exclusion and inequality.
Leftist Petro and his vice president-elect, Francia Marquez, received 50.4% of the vote in Sunday’s election.
“The ELN stays lively in its struggle and political and navy resistance, but in addition its disposition to advance in a peace course of to additional talks which began in Quito in February 2017,” the ELN stated in a press release.
Petro, who takes workplace on Aug. 7, has pledged to totally implement the 2016 peace cope with the previous Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group and to hunt talks with the still-active ELN rebels.
The incoming president, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, has known as for a speedy negotiation with the ELN, and has additionally steered making use of the 2016 peace cope with the demobilized FARC to these combatants who reject the settlement and fashioned dissident teams.
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If Petro promotes adjustments to beat political violence and develops plans for employment and entrepreneurship, agrarian reform, and continuity of the peace course of, amongst others, he could have fashionable help, the ELN stated. The group known as for increasing financial inclusion for Colombia’s marginalized communities.
Peace talks between earlier governments and the ELN — which is accused of financing itself with kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking and unlawful mining — didn’t advance because of the group’s radical positions, a diffuse chain of command and dissent in its ranks.
The ELN, which has some 2,400 fighters, started peace talks with the earlier authorities of former President Juan Manuel Santos, however negotiations fell aside after a automotive bombing in Bogota, whereas present President Ivan Duque demanded that the group launch all its hostages.
The ELN, based by radical Roman Catholic monks in 1964, is broadly thought of to be much less centrally managed than FARC was.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Modifying by Jonathan Oatis)
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