Dissident FARC chief considered a terrorist by the US, advocates for peace dialogue in Colombia

Former number two of the FARC Iván Márquez, who went on to join the list of terrorists in USA After abandoning the peace agreement and taking up arms again, he advocated from the underground for new dialogues that promote a “complete peace” in Colombia.

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From a jungle point and surrounded by three combatants with rifles and camouflages, Márquez proposed reopening peace talks in an interview broadcast on Tuesday by the newscast NotiCentro 1 CM &.

“We want a government that risks everything for complete peace, that resumes the talks with the ELN, that opens a chapter of dialogues with all the insurgencies and that also speaks with the successor organizations of the paramilitaries,” said the former rebel negotiator.

Simultaneously, the United States decided to include Márquez’s armed dissidence in its list of terrorist organizations.

A fugitive from justice, Márquez did not specify if his message was addressed to the government of Iván Duque or to the one who will be elected in the elections next year, in which by law the president will not be able to run for reelection.

Luciano Marín, his first name, commands the Second Marquetalia, an armed group that claims to be a leftist guerrilla and was formed from leaders and middle managers of the FARC who renounced the peace pact signed in 2016.

The NGO Indepaz estimates that the organization has about 2,000 members.

According to the Colombian government, Márquez has his base of operations on the Venezuelan side of the border and operates with the support of Nicolás Maduro’s Bolivarian forces.

Second in command of the Marxist group at the time of the conflict, Márquez headed the team that negotiated peace in Cuba. Three years after signing the agreement, in 2019, he announced his return to arms alleging official breaches of the agreement.

Márquez justified his rearmament in the face of “the perfidy of the State” and the “betrayal of the peace agreement”, and assured that even “special forces” wanted to kill him when he was in a rural area of ​​the department of Huila.

President Duque responded vehemently on Twitter to the former guerrilla chief: “To the narco-terrorist alias ‘Iván Márquez’, protected by the Maduro dictatorship, I express that the ‘complete peace’, which he refers to, will be achieved by capturing or terminating the miserable like him, not giving them concessions ”.

– Terrorist group –

The bulk of the 13,000 ex-guerrillas and FARC collaborators remain within the peace agreement, despite the fact that almost 300 of them have been assassinated in the last five years.

This Tuesday, the United States announced the exclusion of the defunct guerrilla from its list of foreign terrorist organizations, a categorization that it had carried since 1997.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the decision as a recognition of his country’s “commitment” to peace and “strict compliance with the agreement.”

Instead, he listed the Second Marquetalia. The US government attributes to Márquez, Hernán Darío Velásquez “El Paisa” and Henry Castellanos “Romaña” the responsibility for the operations of this dissidence.

Thus, all your properties will be blocked and reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of that country.

Defense Minister Diego Molano rejected any approach with Márquez and his men and reiterated instructions to the public force to “neutralize” or capture him.

“He is a threat to Colombia, he cannot pose as a politician talking about peace when he continues to commit terrorist acts in Colombia,” he emphasized.

Although the peace agreement alleviated political violence, some areas are once again under fire from the organizations that finance themselves from drug trafficking and came to replace the former rebels as de facto authorities, due to the weak presence of the State.

In some regions, those led by the former FARC leader are fighting for power with another dissident faction under the command of “Iván Mordisco” and “Gentil Duarte”.

Known as FARC-EP and with an estimated force of 2,700 men, this group was also included by the US in the list of terrorist organizations.

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Deshawn