Colombian rebel leader Pablo Beltran said on Monday that peace talks between his National Liberation Army (ELN) and the government have been put “on pause” due to remarks made last week by President Gustavo Petro.
Petro questioned whether members of the rebel group’s delegation in Cuba could effectively control the actions of their own commanders on the battlefield. He also said the younger leaders of the group were motivated not by political goals, but by drug trafficking profits.
In 2016, Colombia’s government signed a peace deal with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 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 fighting the Gulf Clan and FARC holdout groups for the control of drug trafficking routes and other resources.
Petro promised during his presidential campaign that he would seek peace deals with all of Colombia’s major armed groups by rolling out a strategy he described as “total peace.”
But a ceasefire between the Colombian government and the Gulf Clan broke down in March, while negotiations with FARC holdout groups are still in preliminary stages.
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