International
Petro considers that the ELN attack in Arauca “closes a peace process with blood”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the attack of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas against a military base in Puerto Jordán, in the department of Arauca (east), which left two soldiers dead and 27 injured, and assured that “it is an action that closes a peace process with blood.”
“The consequences of the actions and the flow of history today bring us a dramatic and repeated event in our last years, a dump loaded with explosives that injures 27 young people and kills two, within the data I have, put by the ELN with whom we were talking about peace,” said Petro the inauguration of magistrate Claudia Regina Expósito as a member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary.
The president compared the attack to the attack against the Colombian Police Cadet School in Bogotá, which in January 2019 left 20 dead and 68 injured, including an Ecuadorian cadet, and which put an end to the dialogue that the Government was maintaining with that guerrilla at that time.
“And obviously, as happened that time in another place near here, at the Police School, because many police officers died, ensigns who were studying there, because it is practically an action that closes a peace process with blood,” he added.
The Colombian Government and the ELN began a new peace negotiation in November 2022 in Caracas that, however, stalled at the beginning of this year due to the demands of the guerrilla that the Executive remove them from the list of terrorist groups and abandon regional dialogues such as the one it maintains in the department of Nariño (southwest) with Comuneros del Sur, supposedly split from the ELN.
During the negotiations in Caracas, Havana and Mexico City, the parties agreed to a one-year bilateral ceasefire, the longest agreed with that guerrilla, which ended on August 3, after which the ELN resumed its attacks against public force and infrastructure in different parts of the country, especially in Arauca, where it is particularly strong.
“And it’s like an eternal becoming, to silence a part of the people and continue in wars, killing each other again and again as if that were our story,” the president lamented.
The Minister of the Interior, Juan Fernando Cristo, also expressed himself in this line: “You cannot follow a negotiating table in the midst of the blood of our wounded soldiers, of the civilian population. The ELN did not understand the message (…) has lost a historic opportunity to negotiate peace; it insists on violence, it insists on harming Colombians.”
“The ELN, definitely, was left by the train of history,” Cristo concluded.
The mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán, considered that “the decision of the National Government to end the peace process is the right one.”
“Colombia cannot negotiate with those who have not given any demonstration of having a will for peace,” Galán said in his X account, in which he regretted “the attack that claimed the lives of two soldiers and injured another 27 in Jordán, Arauca.”
The action was at the Puerto Jordán military base, in Arauca (east), which “was attacked with improvised explosive devices thrown from a dump mantip.”
According to figures provided by the Ministry of Defense, 27 soldiers were injured, “of which 20 have splinters” and seven are “seriously injured.”
Last Sunday, two soldiers died in a rural area of Tame (Arauca) in an attack attributed to the ELN that shot them while they were at a checkpoint.
This terrorist escalation also includes attacks on the Caño Limón-Coveñas and Bicentenario pipelines, two of the most important in the country.
The Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline, 770 kilometers long, transports oil from the Arauca wells to Coveñas, a Colombian port in the Caribbean Sea.
International
Biden to attend Trump’s inauguration in January
US President Joe Biden will attend the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump in January, the White House announced on Monday, despite the fact that the Republican did not attend Biden’s inauguration four years ago.
“The president promised that he would attend the inauguration of whoever won the election. He and the First Lady will keep that promise and attend,” said spokesperson Andrew Bates to reporters traveling with Biden on Air Force One.
“He sees it as an important demonstration of commitment to our democratic values and to honoring the will of the people, while we continue to ensure a smooth and effective transition,” Bates added.
Despite describing Trump as a threat to democracy during the election campaign, Biden seeks to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power to the Republican that Trump denied him.
Biden invited the president-elect to the White House just days after the November 5 election, in which Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The 82-year-old Democrat dropped out of the presidential race for a second term in July and supported Harris after her disastrous performance in a televised debate led Democrats to question her fitness for the office due to concerns over her health and mental agility.
International
Mexico’s Sheinbaum warns Trump: Tariffs won’t stop migration or drug consumption
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum warned Donald Trump on Tuesday that new tariffs will not stop irregular migration or drug consumption in the United States, following the elected president’s threat to impose a 25% tariff on Mexican imports.
“President Trump, it is not with threats or tariffs that the migratory phenomenon or drug consumption in the United States will be stopped,” said the left-wing president while reading a letter she plans to send to the elected president. She also proposed initiating a dialogue.
International
Iran’s Khamenei calls ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu insufficient
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes as “insufficient” and stated that the prime minister deserves a “death sentence.”
The court, based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants on Thursday against Netanyahu, his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas’s military leader Mohammed Deif for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In his first speech since the court issued the arrest orders, Khamenei called the arrest warrant against Netanyahu “insufficient.” He further stated, “These criminal leaders must be sentenced to death,” referring to Netanyahu and Gallant, while addressing a group of Basij volunteers, an Islamist militia that can act as a replacement for security forces.
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