From the AP.

US declines Colombian request to meet with guerrillas
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (AFP) -

US President George W. Bush on Tuesday emphatically declined an invitation to take part in peace talks between the Colombian government and heavily armed leftist rebels.

"This is an issue that the Colombian people and the Colombian president can deal with," Bush said after meeting with Colombian President Andres Pastrana at the White House. The two leaders also discussed the global drug trade and renewal of trade privileges for Andean nations.

"We'll be glad to help Colombia in any way to make the peace. We'll be glad to help the Colombian economy through trade. But I won't be present for the discussions," Bush said.

Pastrana said Monday he had hoped to persuade Bush that direct US participation was crucial to the success of peace talks with the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which has been fighting the Colombian government since the 1960s.

"The presence of the international community at the negotiating table is important," Pastrana told US congressional leaders.

The United States, which has refused contact with the rebels since the kidnapping and murder of three US missionaries in 1999, was among the nations invited to attend a peace conference March 8 in the Switzerland-sized demilitarized zone in south-central Colombia ceded to the rebels in 1998 as an inducement to negotiate.

Canada, Cuba, France, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Venezuela have agreed to attend the conference, Colombian officials said.

In their meeting, Pastrana also thanked Bush for discussing the common concern of illegal drug trafficking and for US aid to his Plan Colombia, the 7.5 billion-dollar effort to end Colombia's 37-year civil war, stop drug trafficking and jump-start the country's struggling economy.

Washington is contributing 1.3 billion dollars passed by Congress last year to help Bogota fight drug trafficking and leftist guerrillas who have gained in strength by protecting the lucrative trade.

As part of the aid, the United States is providing Colombia with helicopters and military training for antidrug battalions.

The aid program has alarmed neighboring countries which are worried that stepped-up fighting in Colombia will spill over into their territory in the form of refugees, drug trafficking and border violence.

Some US officials also are leery of becoming too involved in Colombia's conflict, which has been described as "another Vietnam."

"It is essential to everyone concerned, including ourselves, to not find ourselves in a situation that we were in 35 years ago where we were fighting someone else's civil war," Paul Wolfowitz told US senators Tuesday during confirmation hearings on his appointment as deputy defense secretary.

More than 300,000 people in the nation of 39 million have been killed since the rebel group, known in Spanish as FARC, launched its revolt.

Earlier Tuesday, 30 writers and intellectuals weighed in on the matter in Bogota, in an open letter to Pastrana and Bush published in the daily El Tiempo.

The group, led by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, asked the two leaders to look beyond drugs in their efforts to solve the conflict.

"The reinforcement of democracy demands application of the principles of international cooperation and shared responsibility, as well as a change of focus vis-a-vis the drug problem," the group insisted.

"This is a propitious moment to end the oldest armed conflict in the Americas."