The truth behind Plan Colombia, the $1.3b US military aid package for the 'war on drugs'. We are seeing now it is clearly more US counter-insurgency in Latin America.


Colombian President Extends Deadline for Revival of Peace Talks


By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 11, 2002; Page A14


SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia, Jan. 10 -- Colombia's armed forces stepped up activity around a vast rebel haven today, as President Andres Pastrana extended his deadline for resuming peace negotiations.

As an earlier 48-hour deadline neared for the rebels to leave the haven, Pastrana said the U.N. special envoy for Colombia, James LeMoyne, had asked for another chance to meet guerrilla leaders. Pastrana said LeMoyne now had until Saturday evening to persuade the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym FARC, to return to peace talks. Pastrana turned over the Switzerland-sized haven to the rebels three years ago as an incentive to begin the talks.

But Pastrana suspended those talks Wednesday, accusing the rebels of not being serious about the negotiations. Unless LeMoyne can persuade the FARC to give up some demands that the government finds unreasonable, Pastrana said he would order the Colombian military into the zone Monday evening.

"If by Saturday at 9:30 p.m., these efforts produce no satisfactory results, then the government will assume that this guerrilla group is not continuing talks," Pastrana said in a televised address, after meeting with LeMoyne and other diplomats involved in the peace effort.

Senior military advisers said they were prepared to retake this southern swath of jungle as early as Friday afternoon, Pastrana's original deadline.

Here in the guerrilla zone's largest town, perched on a river bank 200 miles south of the capital, Bogota, uncertainty hardened into fear among many residents as the day wore on without an agreement to restart peace talks.

The single commercial flight into the zone was canceled because of security concerns. Guerrilla negotiators huddled for much of the day at a compound about an hour's drive from here.

There was mounting national and international concern centered on the fate of the roughly 50,000 people who have lived under guerrilla control for three years if the army reentered the zone.

"The people here are very frightened of what might come," said Nestor Ramirez, who is entering his second year as mayor. When a region changes hands in Colombia's four-sided civil war, which pits two Marxist guerrilla forces against the military and a growing paramilitary force, civilians are frequently targeted for any aid they are perceived to have given to the previous group in charge.

That retribution could soon play out in San Vicente del Caguan and neighboring towns within the safe zone. For months, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, as the paramilitary army is known, has been poised outside the zone waiting for an opportunity to enter. Many here worry that the Colombian army could escort paramilitary forces, whose ranks include many former soldiers, into the area despite assurances from Pastrana's chief peace commissioner that "the government guarantees the safety of the civilian population."

Some of Colombia's best-known hard-liners, including former armed forces chief Harold Bedoya, joined with international human rights groups today in calling on the government to ensure that civilians would be protected if the army moved in. But that did little to calm San Vicente residents, many of whom said they plan to flee the city before the army arrives.

"If they come in, we will leave," said Victor Ayala, second-in-command of San Vicente's unarmed community police force, which was created when the zone was formed. Ayala said he hoped that a human rights committee comprising such agencies as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations and diplomatic missions would be installed before the army was sent in.

"First, we'll head to our farms, and then to the mountains to look for whatever protection we can get," Ayala said. "It's not only that we won't be safe from the paramilitaries staying in the zone, but that we won't be safe anywhere in the country."

Pastrana, staking his presidency on ending Colombia's nearly four-decade civil war that now claims more than 3,000 lives a year, turned over this region of pasture and jungle to the FARC without imposing any rules on how it could be used. The only requirement was that negotiations continue. On Wednesday, he declared that they were over, accusing the FARC of refusing to bargain.

The talks had been languishing since October when Pastrana, as a condition for continuing the haven after the FARC kidnapped and murdered a popular former culture minister, increased military vigilance just outside the zone. Rebel leaders said the move, which included military overflights and new checkpoints outside the zone, endangered their peace negotiators. Pastrana, however, refused to alter the conditions.

His firm stance, endorsed by the country's top presidential candidates vying to replace him in an election in May, received another boost today when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell blamed the talks' failure squarely on the insurgents.

The rebels "have not taken the opportunity presented by President Pastrana to enter into serious negotiations that would lead to a peaceful settlement," said Powell, who along with other U.S. diplomats has been skeptical of Pastrana's land-for-peace talks strategy.

The strong support Pastrana has received from abroad and from the Colombian public since announcing the end of the talks could complicate his search for a last-minute solution. Colombian television aired images of troop preparations, with rousing music playing in the background.

Privately, several Western diplomats worried that even if Pastrana reached a last-minute deal to preserve the zone, he might have trouble persuading his senior officers, who believe the haven has been a strategic boon for the 18,000-member guerrilla group, to stand down and not reoccupy it.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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