BOGOTA, April 3 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — Before going to Cuba, the National Liberation Army (ELN) must show its will for peace, the member of the dialogue table on behalf of the Colombian government José Félix Lafaurie affirmed.
It is a complex and difficult negotiation. This is a violation of international humanitarian laws. They broke with the guidelines that we put at the dialogue table’, he declared to Radio W, in reference to the recent murder by that force of nine uniformed men in an attack on a military base.
The ELN has to be aware that there is a government that is giving them the opportunity to end their activities and join civilian life, the also president of the Cattle Breeders Federation explained.
The dialogue table cannot be a mechanism to continue attacking citizens, he said while describing the realities of the war as harsh, and added: “it is necessary to persist in the construction of peace and to continue with its processes”.
They trample the society they claim to defend, the public force does not harass civilization. The ELN is going in the wrong direction, so before arriving in Cuba, Lafaurie remarked, they must explain what their “will for peace” is’.
Likewise, he asserted, that the ‘cease fire’ was nothing more than an anachronistic conflict, since what had to cease was the harassment of the civilian population.
In line with the attack, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, last Friday, brought forward a meeting that was scheduled before, for tomorrow Monday with the government negotiation table and the ELN.
However, the president ruled out that the call for consultations implied the freezing of the dialogue or the existence of a decision related to leaving the table, whose third cycle should begin after Easter in Cuba. — NNN-PRENSA LATINA
