Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno today announced that Quito will no longer host peace talks between the Colombian government and the ELN guerrilla group, the latest blow to Colombia´s fragile efforts to end a long-running series of armed conflicts.
The Ecuadorean decision comes amid a wave of attacks, kidnappings and murders of Ecuadorean citizens by dissidents from the former Colombian guerrilla group Farc that are tied to drug trafficking along the border between the two countries.
Ecuador has beefed up security around its extensive oil installations in northern provinces to prevent possible attacks like those that have plagued Colombia´s oil industry for decades.
"I have asked Ecuador's foreign affairs minister to halt talks with ELN and to withdraw our role as guarantors of the peace talks as long as ELN does not pledge to abandon any terrorist activities," Moreno said.
ELN is not directly tied to the Farc dissidents that are sowing unrest in the border area.
Yesterday Moreno asked his foreign affairs minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa to communicate Ecuador's decision to her Colombian counterpart Maria Angela Holguin. Quito has hosted the ELN talks since February 2017. The talks recently resumed after collapsing along with the expiry of a bilateral ceasefire on 9 January, after which ELN perpetrated numerous attacks in Colombia, including oil pipeline bombings. No new ceasefire has been forged, although attacks have waned.
Speaking to reporters outside Bogotá this afternoon, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos said his government had not been officially informed by Ecuador of its decision to stop hosting the talks, adding that the foreign ministers of the two countries are meeting to discuss the matter. It is not clear if the talks will now shift to another country.
Ecuador's interior minister Cesar Navas said yesterday that a young couple was kidnapped by the so-called Oliver Sinisterra Front, the Farc dissident group that murdered two local journalists and their driver in Colombia after they were kidnapped in the small Esmeraldas town of Mataje in Ecuador on 26 March.
On 27 January, a car bomb wounded 28 people outside a police station in San Lorenzo; on 16 March another bomb was detonated close to the Esmeraldas naval base; and on 20 March a roadside bomb killed four Ecuadorean marines close to Mataje.
On 4 April an explosive device was set off near the Viche bridge that connects the Esmeraldas and Quininde municipalities. The explosion left no victims but damaged a power transmission tower.
In today´s remarks, Moreno said that he has sent to Ecuador's judicial authorities a video containing the testimony of a protected witness who claims that Farc helped finance the presidential campaigns of leftist former president Rafael Correa, Moreno´s predecessor and former ally.
"I have requested an investigation to ascertain the authenticity of the video," Moreno added.
For Colombia, the spillover of drug-related violence into Ecuador and Quito´s withdrawal from the ELN talks compound a sense that years of efforts to forge peace are coming undone. In recent weeks, the misuse of funds allocated for post-conflict social programs under a 2016 peace deal with the Farc cast doubt on the country´s management of the fragile peace process that is closely monitored abroad. And last week a leading Farc member and two associates were accused of drug-trafficking, potentially breaching the terms of the peace deal and opening up possible extradition to the US.
