Colombian media announced on Friday that the government of Gustavo Petro is proposing the creation of a multi-donor fund so that the National Liberation Army (ELN) stop kidnapping.

According to the portal RCN radioSeveral government sources indicated that the international community had already donated to this fund. The ELN and the government are currently in talks to sign a peace deal.

The government was judgmental about this and denied discussing the creation of this fund in the dialogues. “Confronted with the versions circulating of an alleged multi-donor fund that would provide basic income to ELN members to replace illegal sources of funding, we allow ourselves to point out that this issue has not been discussed in the Peace Dialogue Table with those guerrillas.” , the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace said in a statement.

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According to this dependency, “there is no discussion or agreement between the parties on the matter on which the national government could comment”.

However, during Petro’s visit to Germany, he said that nothing has been defined because “the multilateral fund is not a construction in the agreements, it is a possibility and depends on the agreements” with the ELN.

One of the voices raised to protest against this possibility was that of Prosecutor Francisco Barbosa, who has a run-in with the government.

“Colombians deserve not to be publicly ‘vaccinated’ (extorted) (…) if this becomes an initiative, which I think has no basis, we would make Colombia a scenario where they would publicly ‘vaccinate’ with an incentive for crime,” Barbosa said during a speech at a banking convention.

Despite the ceasefire agreed for six months, the guerrilla’s chief negotiator, alias Pablo Beltrán, indicated that they will continue with the detentions, because that is how they have to survive and finance themselves.