Colombia's president announces cease-fire agreement with main armed groups

BOGOTA, Colombia

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro on Saturday announced a six-month "bilateral cease-fire" with five main armed groups operating in the country.

The five organizations that signed up to the agreement are the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Segunda Marquetalia and the Central General Staff, both dissident groups of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Gulf Clan) and the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada.

The agreement is scheduled to be in force until June 30, 2023, “extendable depending on progress in the negotiations,” Petro said on Twitter shortly before the end of 2022.

“This is a bold act. The bilateral cease-fire forces armed organizations and the state to respect it,” he said. “It is my wish at the end of this year that peace is possible.”

The cease-fire will have national and international verification by the UN Verification Mission in Colombia, the Mission to Support the Peace Process of the Organization of American States, the Ombudsman's Office and the Catholic Church.

Since taking office on Aug. 7, Petro has been seeking a policy of "total peace" to end a 50-year armed conflict between the state and various groups of left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, all of whom are involved in drug trafficking.

Peace negotiations that were suspended by former President Ivan Duque were resumed by delegations of the Colombian government and the ELN last month. Talks with the group began in 2017 in Quito during the government of Juan Manuel Santos, and in 2018 they were moved to Havana.

The talks were interrupted by Duque in January 2019, a day after the group carried out a bombing in a police academy in Bogota that killed 21 police officers.