“Total peace is not only national but goes beyond borders. I share a photo taken this morning minutes before leaving for the Republic of Cuba,” Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva wrote on his Twitter account. The delegation is headed by the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, according to statements made to the press by Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

“We are going to compare, there are many rumours, statements, expressions in favor of a truce, of possibilities for peace, but now it is a matter of seeing if it is true,” explained the president, who since his electoral campaign assured he will seek total peace in Colombia.

The objective is to resume peace negotiations with the ELN, which began in 2017 during the government of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) in Quito and then transferred to Havana.

The government of former President Ivan Duque (2028-2022) broke off the negotiations after the guerrilla attack against a police school, and also tried to break the protocols established for these dialogues.

Petro also commissioned Rueda to explore the disposition of criminal structures to advance to “peace processes, of acceptance of justice (…) or bilateral truces that could substantially reduce violence in Colombia.”

“Danilo’s job at this time is to examine the maximum extent of the violence in Colombia to what extent the possibility of peace processes is true, of accepting justice in many cases, of restarting negotiations, of bilateral truces that could diminish substantially the violence in Colombia,” he said.

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