Fresh off Colombia’s election of a former guerrilla fighter to be its new president, the country’s largest remaining guerrilla group wants to come home after being exiled to Cuba three years ago following a terrorist stike.

The National Liberation Army guerrilla group, known as the ELN, announced this week its willingness to resume peace talks. In a statement, the group said that it will support the president-elect, Gustavo Petro, if he is willing to back social plans that assure employment and seek agrarian reforms, among other changes.  

“The ELN maintains its system of struggle and political and military resistance actively, but also its full willingness to advance peace conversations that started in February 2017,” the statement said. 

Mr. Petro, who won the presidential elections with 50.5 percent of the vote, campaigned on his willingness to open peace discussions with the remaining armed groups in Colombia, specifically with the ELN.

However, the president of the Colombia Risk Analysis consultancy, Sergio Guzmán, said Colombians do not trust the guerrilla group, creating a possible obstacle for Mr. Petro. The ELN has tried to reach peace agreements with multiple governments, including that of President Santos, but never settled. 

“I think that Gustavo Petro must understand that just as half of the population didn’t vote for him, half of the country will not want an agreement with the guerrilla group,” Mr. Guzmán said. “They share political ideologies, as he is a leftist president, but we are still dealing with an armed group who likes to ask the government for things that it is not necessarily capable of doing.”

A professor of international studies and politics at the Universidad del Rosario at Bogota, Oscar Palma, agrees with Mr. Guzmán, saying that if the negotiations between the group and the government do not include the necessary punishment to hold the guerrillas accountable, a portion of the population will reject the peace discussions. 

“The ELN must first commit to ending kidnappings and to a ceasefire for a discussion to take place,” Mr. Palma said. “We’ll see if Gustavo Petro’s government will impose the idea of a ceasefire during the negotiations.”

The ELN is Colombia’s largest remaining leftist guerrilla group since the 2016 peace deal ended 50 years of war between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, and the government.  

Founded in 1964, the ELN has been involved in the drug trade, kidnapping practices, and illegal gold mining in Venezuela and Colombia. It now has about 2,300 active fighters.

In January 2019, the guerrilla group bombed a car at the General Santander National Police Academy in Bogota, an attack that left 21 people dead and 68 injured. Consequently, the government suspended peace talks with the group and 10 of its leaders were  extradited to Cuba.

With Mr. Petro becoming the first leftist president in the history of Colombia and emphasizing in his victory speech that his government will not exclude anyone, the ELN said it is looking forward to returning home.

“One of the things that Gustavo Petro said is that he will try to create a united front in Latin America, without exclusions,” Mr. Guzmán said. “In my opinion, that is a direct wink at Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela.”