Havana hosts Colombia government, ELN 'historical' ceasefire agreement
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Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez says the agreement would enter into force on August 3.
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Colombia President Gustavo Petro and ELN leader Antonio Garcia shaking hands, with the presence of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel (Gustavo Petro Twitter account)
The Colombian government and the ELN guerrilla group agreed on Friday to a six-month ceasefire in the Cuban capital, Havana, as they work toward a peace deal to end decades of bloody conflict.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez announced that a deal for a "bilateral, national and temporary ceasefire" was signed in the presence of Colombian President Gustavo Petro and ELN leader Antonio Garcia.
Rodriguez said the ceasefire -- sealed at the conclusion of a third round of peace talks in the Cuban capital -- would enter into force on August 3.
Founded in 1964, the ELN had more than 5,800 militants in 2022, according to authorities. It is Colombia's last active guerrilla group.
The ELN has taken part in failed negotiations with Colombia's last five governments and has been party to only one previous ceasefire which lasted for 101 days in 2017 and 2018, as per the AFP.
"Here, a new world is born, here a phase of the armed insurgency in Latin America ends," Petro expressed at Friday's ceremony.
Garcia, whose presence was made possible by Colombia's top prosecutor scrapping an arrest warrant for him just days earlier, said, "We have not yet signed substantial agreements" but rather "procedural agreements".
Dialogue with the ELN started in 2018 under then-president Juan Manuel Santos, who had signed a peace treaty two years earlier with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) group. The FARC subsequently disarmed and transformed itself into a political party.
But talks with the ELN were called off in 2019 by conservative then-right-wing President Ivan Duque following a car bomb attack on a police academy in Bogota that left 22 people dead.
Duque had arrest warrants issued for ELN negotiators and asked Cuba to extradite them, which Havana refused.
Petro, a former guerrilla who last August became Colombia's first-ever leftist leader, reached out to the ELN shortly after coming to power in pursuit of his "total peace" policy.
The two sides resumed formal talks in Venezuela in November for the first time since 2019. A second round was held in Mexico, followed by a third now in Cuba.
The ELN had refuted a ceasefire announcement made by Petro on New Year's Eve, and an ELN ambush of a military convoy in March, which left nine soldiers dead, had cast doubt over the future of the talks.
A fourth negotiating round will be held in Venezuela from August 14 to September 4, confirmed Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.
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