Colombia’s government and a major guerrilla group said Monday they would resume peace negotiations that have been stalled since July.
The government and the Segunda Marquetalia, a dissident group of the FARC guerrilla army that disbanded in 2017, will hold talks in Havana, they said in a joint statement, without providing a date.
The Segunda Marquetalia had agreed to a unilateral ceasefire in June, but talks broke down the following month.
Earlier this month, the rebel group’s chief negotiator, Walter Mendoza, told AFP he blamed the talks’ collapse on the government’s failure to cancel warrants for the arrest of the faction’s leaders.
In Monday’s statement, the parties jointly condemned reports of an incident over the weekend in which an Indigenous person was killed and six wounded in an army operation in a coca-growing region of the southwestern Narino department, where the Segunda Marquetalia is active.
Coca is the main ingredient in cocaine.
The 2016 peace deal that saw the FARC disarm was hailed as a turning point in the six-decade-long conflict between Colombian security forces, guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and drug gangs.
Dissident factions of the FARC — including the Central General Staff (EMC), a rival of Segunda Marquetalia — continue to hold sway in several parts of the country.
Colombia’s first-ever leftist president, Gustavo Petro, vowed on his election in 2022 to end the violence through dialogue.
On his watch, the state has entered into talks with at least eight armed groups.
