Colombian President Gustavo Petro said today he would accept a proposal from the country's largest remaining rebel group to allow an independent commission to investigate the group's alleged links to drug trafficking.
The proposal was made in a video released on January 20 by Antonio Garcia, leader of the National Liberation Army (ELN). In the video, Garcia says that it is true that the rebels collect taxes from cocaine traffickers, but that they themselves do not run any drug trafficking routes or cocaine production laboratories.
“The ELN is not linked to drug trafficking,” Garcia said in the video and called on the government to allow an independent commission to verify the group’s claims.
In a message on the X network, Petro said he would accept the proposal, adding that the agency verifying the rebels' claims should be scientific and independent of governments, and should submit its findings to the United Nations. Petro also called on the rebels to support efforts to replace coca plantations in the northeastern region of Catatumbo.
Colombia's president has long accused the rebels of profiting from the drug trade and has called their leadership drug traffickers disguised as guerrilla fighters.
The group's alleged ties to drug trafficking are one of the issues that prevented peace talks from progressing in the first two years of Peter's administration.
Peace talks between the two sides were ultimately broken off last year when the ELN mounted an offensive in Catatumbo, which killed dozens of people and forced more than 50.000 to flee their homes.
The ELN said in January that it wanted to work with the government on a “national agreement” that would allow talks to resume. But Petro said it would only resume talks once the group stopped drug trafficking.
The ELN was founded in the early 1960s and has about 5.000 fighters in Colombia and neighboring Venezuela.
The group's influence in rural communities along Colombia's border with Venezuela has grown in recent years as it fills the vacuum left by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebel group, which disbanded in 2017 after signing a peace agreement with the Colombian government.
Colombian officials said in January that they had discussed the possibility of organizing an attack on the ELN with the help of the US military in a phone call with President Donald Trump.
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