Gustavo Petro would resume dialogue with ELN in Havana

Bogota, Jul 30 (Prensa Latina) Colombian President-elect Gustavo Petro said on Friday that he had spoken with Cuban Ambassador here Javier Caamaño about the resumption of the suspended protocol for the peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean, he recalled that there is a place used by Colombia in the Government of Juan Manuel Santos, Havana, Cuba, where those negotiations were taking place.

Cuba did not do so well because they turned it into the excuse for a diplomatic offensive against it, Petro said, referring to the fact that the administration of then US President Donald Trump reinstated Cuba in the arbitrary list of State sponsors of terrorism in 2021.

Cuba had been removed in 2015 from that list, where it should have never been, due to the mandate of President Barack Obama (2009-2017) during the new turns in bilateral relations.

In the new offensive against Cuba, the US Government alluded to Havana’s refusal to extradite several ELN leaders, who traveled to Havana to hold negotiations with the Colombian Government, as requested by Washington after the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a cadet school in Bogota.

Cuba’s action was based on and governed by the protocols established with the Colombian State to hold the talks in Havana.

Petro assured that it will be the Cuban Government that will decide whether it wants to remain as a host and on the other hand whether the Norwegian Government wants to maintain its role as guarantor.