Colombia’s Second-Largest Rebel Group Joins Peace Talks With Government
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Version 0 of 1. BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The National Liberation Army, Colombia’s second-largest rebel group, said Wednesday that it would begin negotiations with the government, strengthening hopes that the end of a 50-year rebellion in Colombia could be at hand. The E.L.N., as it is known in Spanish, now joins the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — the country’s main guerrilla group, known as the FARC — in seeking a broad peace deal that would lead to a cease-fire and disarmament while bringing all of Colombia’s rebel-held hinterlands under government control. In a joint news conference in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Colombian rebel and government leaders said the two sides would begin talks in Ecuador. While the details of what might eventually be decided were vague, the leaders said they sought to “end the armed conflict and to agree on changes that seek a peaceful and equal Colombia.” The Colombian conflict is Latin America’s longest-running war, having taken the lives of an estimated 220,000 people and displaced more than five million people. Much like the FARC, the E.L.N. was founded in the 1960s and financed itself through kidnappings and taxes on the lucrative cocaine trade. Yet recent years of clashes with the government have reduced the ranks of both groups: The E.L.N. could have as few as 1,500 fighters, while the FARC is estimated to be down to 7,000. On Wednesday, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, who has staked his presidency on signing a peace deal with the rebels, asked the public to join him in supporting the talks. He said that while the government had spent years trying to defeat the E.L.N., the time had come to negotiate directly with them, much as with the FARC. “Just as we have fought the E.L.N. in the battlefield, we believe that they can and must play a role in the peace process,” Mr. Santos said. Opponents of the negotiations countered with skepticism on Wednesday. Federico Hoyos, a conservative Colombian legislator who has criticized the talks with the FARC, said he believed that members of the E.L.N. would drag out negotiations for years in an effort to escape prosecution. Fighters who had committed war crimes, he said, might eventually try to enter the political realm without facing justice. “The challenge is not to repeat the errors we had with the FARC,” Mr. Hoyos said, adding that the government had not pursued a hard enough bargain. Wednesday’s announcement is likely to give new momentum to FARC and government negotiators who have spent the last three years in talks in Havana but missed what was meant to be the final deadline for a deal on March 23. The talks are set to continue, and negotiators say the agreement could come in late spring. The FARC negotiations could offer a preview of an eventual accord with the E.L.N. So far, negotiators in Havana have agreed to a transition that would reduce sentences for those who admit to crimes and require the guerrillas to lay down their arms. But many of the details, like when disarmament would take place and who would collect the weapons, continue to bedevil negotiators. Carlos Velandia, a former E.L.N. fighter who demobilized in 2004, said the group’s participation removed the last stumbling block to ending the rebellion. “It was now or never,” he said. “Talks with the E.L.N. was the factor that was lacking to get a complete peace deal. With the arrival of the E.L.N. to the peace process, the war is going to end.” |