BOGOTA, Nov 30 Reuters -- Colombia's government should hold talks with all armed groups to seek a complete peace for the Andean country, dissident leader Ivan Marquez, who is wanted on U.S. drug traffickers charges, told local media.
Marquez is a former commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC rebels who helped that group negotiate its 2016 peace deal with the government, before he accepted the accord and took up arms again as the head of the Segunda Marquetalia dissident group.
In an interview with the National Liberation Army rebels, Marquez said he wanted a government that bets on a total peace, restarts conversations with the ELN, for there to be a chapter of dialogue with all the insurgencies and for it to speak also with the organizations that are successors to the armed forces.
High peace commissioner Juan Camilo Restrepo said they are dedicated to illegal activities, they are dedicated to drug traffickers. They are the ones who commit homicides against human rights defenders, against signatories of the peace deal against social leaders. Some 13,000 members of the FARC were demobilized under the deal, including about 7,000 combatants.
The government says that some 2,400 fighters are in their ranks, and are comprised of rebels who never backed the deal, those who have rearmed since it was signed, or fighters who were never FARC guerrillas.
Dissident groups battle each other and crime gangs for access to illegal mining and cocaine production.
Caracas denied that fighting has spread across the border to Venezuela, where Colombia's government says that the Venezuelan military is battling for control of drug traffickers.
The United States is offering up to $10 million for information that could lead to Marquez's capture.