By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia remains open to dialogue with National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels despite their recent offensive in the country’s east, peace commissioner Otty Patino said, as the government moves ahead with a separate process with some 300 fighters who split from the group.
The government of President Gustavo Petro suspended peace talks with the ELN in January, after the rebels launched a series of attacks in the Catatumbo region, along the border with Venezuela, causing around 100 deaths and displacing some 56,000 people.
The suspension was the biggest blow yet to promises by Petro, himself a former member of the M-19 urban guerrillas, to end more than 60 years of conflict in Colombia, where several major armed groups have splintered into smaller factions, complicating dialogue.
“The government has left the door open, but it won’t mean a dialogue per se, it means the ELN will change direction, change its way of thinking, change the way they are directing their criminal strategy and it would mean a very radical transformation from now on,” Patino told Reuters in a Monday interview.
The government would need to see genuine commitment, said Patino, also a former member of the M-19, and for ELN leaders to stop “believing war is the way.”
Patino and Petro spent Saturday in southwestern Narino province where the Comuneros del Sur, an ELN splinter group of about 300 people, handed over explosives, grenades and rocket launchers and signed a deal to substitute coca crops, a initial phase ahead of a potential demobilization deal.
The possible deal with the Comuneros del Sur is the only accord Petro looks likely to sign before he leaves office in August 2026.
His government has held at least initial dialogues with some 11 armed groups, ranging from major rebel organizations to urban gangs, but only two sets of talks are now active.
The ELN, which has about 3,200 combatants and is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and the European Union, said it had no interest in responding to Patino because they do not recognize him as an interlocutor.
Patino said the government will continue work on what it calls ‘territorial peace’ – regional peace strategies that include talks with smaller groups – and is ready to carry out processes with other armed groups, including former fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels who reject that group’s 2016 peace deal.
“The government has taken the profound decision to advance all these processes with those who are willing, and of course create irreversible processes,” Patino said.
Colombia’s armed groups have about 20,000 members, according to security force estimates, and fund themselves through drug trafficking, illegal mining and other crimes.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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