The tense situation at the negotiating table, frozen since last April by decision of the insurgent movement, is now joined by a series of mutual recriminations which expose apparently unbridgeable positions and disagreements.

Yesterday, the ELN Central Command issued a communiqué in which it assured that ‘the publicized total peace serves the continued genocide of the popular leadership, designed to drown in blood any attempt of change (…) while President Petro speaks against the prevailing order of injustice, his plan serves the perpetuation of the tyrannical regime’.

In his message he further added that the objective of the negotiation processes underway with several armed groups is to ‘wash the image and legalize gangs, and paramilitary squads’.

The statement followed comments by Peace Commissioner Counselor Otty Patiño, who earlier in the day considered that the ELN has to move forward with unilateral actions.

Without a clear demonstration that they are walking towards peace, I see it very difficult to lift or continue with a ceasefire lifting with that organization,’ he told a news media.

He also objected to the consequences of the armed strike decreed for eight days by this guerrilla in Chocó in the northwest of the country and which ended yesterday because, in his opinion, people cannot live in a situation of confinement which in the long run constitutes a collective kidnapping and causes damages in terms of health and education.

Regarding the ELN’s request to be removed from the list of Organized Armed Groups (GAOS) as an indispensable condition to return to talks, Patiño reiterated to RCN Radio that this would mean presenting a law in the Congress of the Republic and at this moment ‘there is no favorable environment for that’.

It is enough what has already been done in considering them a GAO outside the law, which is in some way what characterizes them as a political player, he said, while emphasizing that granting them another denomination is a decision that must be made in the Congress of the Republic and does not correspond to the head of state, Gustavo Petro.

He took advantage of another of his statements to communicate to the highest commander of that guerrilla, Antonio García, that the only person in Colombia who guides the peace policy is the President of the Republic.

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