Peace talks being held in Havana by the delegations of the Colombian government and the ELN are on “pause,” the guerrilla’s chief negotiator, Pablo Beltrán, said on Monday.

“The table is going through a break, the work that was there today, Monday, we have suspended waiting for the government’s response and we have agreed to meet tomorrow Tuesday to study it,” Beltrán said in a message on the YouTube channel of the ELN peace delegation.

The National Liberation Army’s (ELN) chief negotiator specified that the talks entered a “crisis” after leftist President Gustavo Petro said on Friday that the illicit economy motivates some of the ELN.

Beltrán pointed out that these statements contradict the political status the government gives to the guerrilla group. “If the president comes and tells the generals that we are a non-political group, that we are like the Clan del Golfo,” a drug cartel, the talks “will be for nothing,” he added.

The guerrilla chief stressed that “according to the study of the positions” of each side would be “reactivated” on Tuesday “the table” of the negotiations, which the government and ELN delegations began on May 2 in the Cuban capital.

Over the weekend, the ELN had asked the government to define whether it considers the dialogue to achieve peace in Colombia to be “a serious political process”.

In a statement released this Monday in response, the government made it clear that it “recognizes the existence of negotiations and dialogues of a political nature” with the ELN, urging it to “continue its advance” to come to “an cessation of hostilities between all parties to the conflict”.

“We hope that the response of the National Liberation Army (ELN) is in line with this invitation and call,” he said.

In his post, Beltrán emphasized that “there have been some public statements that help to clear up some misunderstandings, but that (…) what motivated the claim” of the ELN “has to be latently evaluated.”

Petro promoted 2022 peace negotiations, with talks beginning in Caracas in November and continuing in Mexico City in March.

The government hopes to reach a ceasefire with the ELN before Colombia’s regional elections, said Otty Patiño, a government negotiator.

Colombia has been bled by more than half a century of armed conflict and has attempted numerous peace negotiations with armed groups, many of them without success. In 2016, a historic pact disarmed the powerful FARC guerrilla and turned it into a political party.