Colombia.- Commanders of the FARC dissidents assured this Sunday that they were “ready” to start a new dialogue table on May 16 with the Government of Colombia in an attempt to demobilize some 3,000 guerrillas who remained in arms after the historic peace agreement. of 2016.
“We announce to the whole world that our delegates at the dialogue table with the Colombian State, at the head of the national government, are ready to begin peace negotiations on May 16 of this year,” the well-known spokesperson announced from a dais like Ángela Izquierdo, in the framework of a massive meeting of commanders of the FARC dissidents in San Vicente del Caguan, department of Caquetá (south).
The main commanders of the FARC dissidence accompanied the woman. Beside him, the leader of the Central General Staff (EMC) dissidence known as “Iván Mordisco” and his combatants supported the announcements while thousands of people, peasants, members of social organizations and sympathizers of the rebellion, listened.
In addition, “we see with good intentions the installation of the oversight, monitoring and verification mechanism on April 26”, to check that the agreement is fulfilled, assured Izquierdo without specifying in which country the dialogue table will take place.
Left for dead last year by the authorities, “Mordisco” smiled wearing his huge glasses and wearing a camouflaged fatigues. From an improvised wooden platform, he listened to the repeated praise of the “popular struggle” from the “guerrillas”, “comrades” and “peasant guards”.
The EMC is the main dissident group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an organization that refused to sign the historic 2016 peace agreement between the government at the time and this guerrilla.
The rebel spokesperson assured that this time the conditions are in place for “the deployment of a possible peace.”
heirs
Those led by Iván Mordisco consider themselves the true heirs of the FARC – for a long time the most powerful guerrilla in the Americas – and in recent months they have reorganized with new dissident fronts operating in different regions of Colombia.
It is estimated that there are about 3,000 men who operate mainly in the Amazon, on the Pacific coast and on the border with Venezuela.
In the meeting in the Yarí savannah, in the Amazon foothills, the FARC dissidents responded to the negotiation proposal of the leftist President Gustavo Petro, in power since August 2022.
Under his “Total Peace” policy, the President hopes to extinguish more than half a century of internal conflict that followed the peace agreement that disarmed the bulk of the then guerrilla seven years ago and transformed it into a political party.
At Petro’s initiative, a six-month bilateral ceasefire was agreed with the main factions of the FARC dissidence since January 1, as well as with other armed groups.
Colombia is experiencing an armed conflict that persists after the 2016 peace agreement and pits rebels, drug traffickers and state agents against each other in a prolonged war that leaves more than 9 million victims.
