Colombia’s government and its largest remaining guerrilla group have agreed to a six-month ceasefire at talks in Cuba, in the latest attempt to resolve a conflict dating back to the 1960s.
The government and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, announced the accord at a ceremony in Havana on Friday attended by Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, top guerrilla commander, Antonio García, and Cuban officials. The ceasefire takes effect in phases, goes fully into effect in August and then lasts for six months.
Petro has pushed for what he calls a “total peace” that would demobilize all of the country’s remaining rebel groups as well as its drug trafficking gangs. He has questioned whether senior ELN leaders have full control of a younger generation of commanders who he has suggested are focused more on the illegal drug trade than on political goals.
In 2016, Colombia’s government signed a peace deal with the larger FARC group that ended five decades of conflict in which an estimated 260,000 people were killed.
But violence has continued to affect rural pockets of the country where the ELN has been active, along with FARC holdout groups and drug trafficking gangs.
Read more here.
