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Colombian government and rebels hold peace talks

COLOMBIA’S government and the ELN rebel group announced on Tuesday that they had been holding exploratory peace talks.

The revelation came just five days before presidential elections in which President Juan Manuel Santos’s 18-month-old negotiations with Colombia’s main rebel group Farc hang in the balance.

His opponents dismissed the announcement as a political ploy.

The presidency’s website said the talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) had begun in January. 

Mr Santos said additional talks would not commence until the ELN agreed to so-far unspecified conditions.

“We are not going to put at risk the advances with Farc in Havana,” said Mr Santos, adding that they were in “their final phase.”

It was announced on Saturday that the parties had agreed on a framework for identifying and indemnifying the conflict’s victims.

The parties had already reached framework agreements on agrarian reform, rebel participation in politics and dismantling the drug trade.

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