International
The Government of Colombia denies having given money to the ELN through corrupt contracts
The Colombian Government rejected on Wednesday the accusations of the former director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) Olmedo López, who assured in statements to Justice that the guerrilla National Liberation Army (ELN) received money from the State through contracts of this entity, immersed in a corruption scandal.
This was stated by the delegation of the Government that negotiates peace with the ELN in a statement in which he pointed out that “as we have reiterated in all circumstances, the demand on the ELN to suspend the practice of kidnapping for economic reasons that the National Government has formulated has never been subject to any offer of consideration or economic benefits.”
The negotiators emphasize that “all the actions in progress of the peace process with the ELN have strictly adhered to the principle of legality that means respect for the Constitution and the laws in force.”
In a statement he gave last month to investigators of the Supreme Court of Justice, revealed last Tuesday by Noticias Caracol, López, who is being investigated for several cases of corruption during his management in the UNGRD, said: “This is a network that includes from ministers to contractors, but in the middle there are other officials (…) and it touches an actor who has a very strong military capacity.”
“The name that says that role that I showed the Prosecutor’s Office and that reads in the summary of my statement (…) is the ELN and its great influence in the department of Arauca (border with Venezuela),” López added.
The former director of the UNGRD recalled that last December, in the fifth cycle of the peace negotiation held in Mexico City, the Government and the ELN agreed that this armed group would cease kidnappings for economic purposes.
However, last May, when the corruption scandal had already broken out and López was no longer director of the Unit, the guerrillas “ended” the suspension of kidnappings for economic purposes, considering that the Executive has failed to comply with the creation of a “multi-donor fund for the peace process.”
In that direction, López assured the investigators: “they issued a statement a few months ago: ‘we return to the kidnappings because they have not guaranteed the maintenance of the men’ (…) and how were they going to guarantee it? With contracts.”
After this, the former official pointed out that a UNGRD contract was delivered to the representative of the Chamber Karen Manrique, of the department of Arauca, an area “of a high guerrilla influence of the ELN.”
In their statement, the Government’s peace negotiators recalled that all the issues that are negotiated with the ELN are framed in the legality and that, in addition, there is “permanent observation of the international community” as are the guarantor and accompanying countries, the UN and the Catholic Church.
“The contents of each of the sessions of the Dialogue Table, the working commissions and the meetings of the heads of the delegations, are duly recorded in the working minutes signed by both delegations and the representatives of the international community,” the document emphasizes.
For his part, the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, said on social networks that in the peace negotiations with the ELN “they have only achieved a first point of political commitment, any funding with the ELN, as happened with the FARC, would take place in the final phase with the definitive demobilization of violence and would never be given through public procurement.”
The president assured that “Olmedo’s falsehood is that he desperately needs to denounce to lower his sentence, without returning the stolen money.”
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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