BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia on Friday suspended for second time in less than a year peace talks with the National Liberation Army, or ELN, after blaming the rebel group of the violence that has been affecting a northeastern region of the country in recent days.
“The dialogue process with this group is suspended, the ELN has no will for peace,” President Gustavo Petro said on his X account.
The ELN has been fighting with ex-rebels of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrilla group, or FARC, on a region close to the border between Colombia and Venezuela known as Catatumbo.
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Recently the ELN has been spreading into rural areas abandoned by the FARC, the large rebel group that made a peace deal with Colombia’s government in 2016.
On Thursday, a former FARC leader blamed the ELN of killing at least four demobilized members of the group. Authorities have said that they are investigating other deaths.
“What the ELN has committed in Catatumbo are war crimes,” said Petro, without giving more details.
Colombia’s government suspended peace talks with the ELN last September after blaming it of killing two soldiers and injured more than 20.
Peace negotiations with the ELN began in November 2022 after Petro took power as the first leftist president and he also launched talks with other armed groups under a policy known as total peace.
The ELN, which was founded in the 1960s by union leaders and university students inspired by the Cuban Revolution, has an estimated 6,000 fighters in Colombia and Venezuela and finances itself through drug trafficking and illegal gold mines.
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