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July 24th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : The Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) enter permanent peace talks on Monday. The parties aim to reach a bilateral ceasefire agreement by September.
The Colombian government and the ELN launched a new, and permanent round of talks in the attempt to reach an agreement on a bilateral ceasefire before the visit of Pope Francis to Colombia in September.
Both government chief negotiator Juan Camilo Restrepo and the ELN commented on the initiative. Restrepo noted that the primary objective of the unabated, and continuous talks is to make progress on the issue of a cessation of hostilities.
The ELN, for its part, issued a statement, stressing “the possibility and responsibility to take a historic step: to agree on a bilateral ceasefire that offers the country a de-escalation of the armed conflict.”
The ELN is Colombia’s last-standing major leftist guerrilla group. The ELN is an undogmatic Marxist, to some degree also Syndicalist organization that has also been strongly influenced by so-called liberation theology. It was after an intervention from the Colombian Catholic Church that the Colombian government agreed to hold talks about a bilateral ceasefire.
If plans to reach a ceasefire before the visit of Pope Francis on September 6 shall succeed, the government and ELN negotiators have only a little more than one months to complete negotiations.
The administration of President Juan Manuel Santos insists that a bilateral ceasefire can only be accepted if the ELN fully halts all violent activities including attacks on oil companies and infrastructure and private industries.
The peace talks with the ELN are meant to result in an agreement based on the peace accord signed between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – people’s Army (FARC-EP).
One of the possible, and major stumbling blocks is that the ELN may be extremely reluctant to demobilize and disarm as long as the government and its security forces don’t provide better security.
The number of assassinations of leftist politicians, community organizers and rights activists has skyrocketed since the demobilization of the FARC-EP, especially in formerly guerrilla controlled areas where the State failed to provide security while ultra-right-wing neo-paramilitaries and drug cartels filled the power vacuum.
CH/L – nsnbc 24.07.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/07/24/colombian-government-and-eln-aim-to-reach-ceasefire-by-september/
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