(4 Aug 2023)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bogota - 3 August 2023
1. Various of Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, during cease-fire announcement
2. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia:
"This national agreement has to do with the transformations. I invite you, brothers and sisters, to join me on the side of the revolution, on the side of the transformation on the side of the multicolored democracy, on the side of the people."
3. Petro speaking
4. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia:
"When will there exist a definitive agreement? And what will include in such agreements? Is this a pact between armed groups as we have done in the past? Truce? Cease-fires? Peace agreements? All of which have often been violated during the history of Colombia."
5. People watching announcement
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pablo Beltran, Head of ELN Delegation:
"Yes, today a cease-fire begins, and it is distinctive because it has a robust verification mechanism, has the main characteristics (of a ceasefire). There is a will from both parties to comply with it. There are some parts not included in this cease-fire. It's not that there is a lack of intention, but it's unattainable. In other words, we are in the first six months of this cease-fire. For the first six months we are trying to cease the offensive operations and keep the defensive operations."
7. Aureliano Carbonell, Isabel Torres, and Gustavo Martínez, members of the ELN delegation
8. Petro and Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Special Representative in Colombia for the UN Secretary General sitting during ceremony
9. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Otty Patiño, Head of Government Delegation:
"We have the profound believe that it is possible to overcome the armed conflict, that the armed political confrontation between the government and the ELN for six decades must end."
10. Iván Cepeda, Member of the government peace delegation, Otty Patiño, Head of Government Delegation; Danilo Rueda, Government Peace Commissioner
11. Various of ceremony
STORYLINE:
Colombia and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, formally began a six-month cease-fire Thursday as part of a process to forge a permanent peace between the government and the country’s last remaining rebel group.
The cease-fire agreement, announced June 9 during talks in Havana, comes amid skepticism among some Colombians that the peace process can fully end an insurgency dating back to the 1960s or halt the alleged involvement of the group's estimated 5,000 remaining members in drug trafficking.
The ELN leadership denies involvement in the drug trade.
President Gustavo Petro called on the country's political groups to seize the period to reach a national agreement to achieve peace.
Petro appealed to the guerrilla leaders to leave behind deadly violence, saying that “I invite you, brothers and sisters, to join me on the side of the revolution, on the side of the transformation on the side of the multicolored democracy, on the side of the people."
The cease-fire is supposed to suspend attacks between the guerrillas and the Colombian police and military throughout the country, and can be extended next January if progress is made during peace negotiations.
Petro, who was sworn in last year as the country's first leftist leader, gave new momentum to the country's peace efforts, and he reached the latest accord with top guerrilla commander Antonio García during the talks in the Cuban capital in June.
While to factions of the ELN announced their endorsement of the cease-fire, their leader warned they reserves the right to fight if attacked.
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