LOS POZOS, Colombia (CNN) -- In a small hamlet on the fringe of the Amazon jungle, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, invited ambassadors from Europe and the Americas to meet dozens of coca and poppy planters.
The planters say the government's fumigation efforts are destroying their farms, ruining their local economies and causing severe environmental damage.
The farmers and rebels want the international community to subsidize programs to develop alternative crops such as rubber, rice and cattle farming.
Notably absent from the conference was the United States, whose Congress is putting the final touches on a $1.3 billion aid package that will significantly boost the Colombian military's ability to strike at cocaine and heroin producers.
Known as Plan Colombia, that effort is a $7.5 billion strategy to bring an end to the country's nearly 40-year civil war and to stop narcotics trafficking.
The United States says its aid is not designed to help Colombia fight a war against guerrillas. But the FARC, which controls much of the territory to be targeted by anti-drug efforts, sees the U.S. aid package as a direct threat.
Fears that peace process could unravel
Although the FARC and the government began peace talks last year, progress has been slow and some analysts fear the U.S. military aid could cause the peace process to unravel.
Faced with the prospect of renewed combat, the FARC hopes this conference will stimulate international opposition to Plan Colombia. But it also sees an equally important benefit from hosting a gathering of world VIPs -- a chance for long-sought international recognition.
The jungle meeting was part of a symposium, that had the government's blessing, between FARC and European diplomats on peaceful ways to combat the booming drug trade. It also coincided with talks in Bogota, Colombia, between President Andres Pastrana and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, to discuss possible EU contributions to Plan Colombia.
The plan is aimed at stemming drug trafficking and funding an eventual peace deal with the FARC, whose chief, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, was on hand to receive 21 ambassadors and diplomatic staff from Europe, Canada, Japan and United Nations officials.
Meeting seen as diplomatic coup for FARC
The government set up the meeting in San Vicente in the southeast as part of the peace process. The FARC, who have gained a significant diplomatic coup with the talks, hope to use them to split Washington and the EU, which favors alternative development projects.
The EU plans to hold a summit in Madrid on July 7 on financing for Plan Colombia, and the government hopes the Europeans will support Pastrana's call for $1 billion in donations.
U.S. and Colombian officials say the FARC is responsible for a huge rise in cocaine output and reaping some $500 million a year from drug-trafficking, bankrolling an uprising that has cost 35,000 lives in just the last 10 years.
'We ... call on the world to seek alternative solutions'
"The U.S. is looking for military intervention to solve the problem but we want to call on the world to seek alternative solutions," said senior rebel commander Ivan Marquez.
"For peasants, drug cultivation is the consequence of hunger and poverty ... But Plan Colombia is a counterinsurgency program disguised as counternarcotics," he told Reuters.
Colombia produced 520 tons of cocaine, about 80 percent of world supply, in 1999, and some six tons of heroin, according to U.S. estimates. This, Washington views as a national security threat.
U.S. officials have refused to meet the FARC until the rebels hand over those responsible for last year's kidnap-murders of three American human rights activists.
Farmers fear 100,000 could lose their homes
Under Plan Colombia, drug plantations located deep in rebel-controlled regions would be eradicated using powerful herbicides. U.S.-trained Colombian army anti-narcotics units would be flown in by helicopter beforehand to secure the area from guerrilla attacks.
Peasant leaders in the main southern drug-producing regions of Caqueta and Putumayo fear that Plan Colombia could force at least 100,000 civilians from their homes.
Diplomatic sources said the EU might not meet Pastrana's $1 billion request unless the U.S.-backed military component of the plan is altered.
A five-year program to destroy drug plantations voluntarily, help peasants switch to other cash crops and set up factories to process farm produce has been proposed by the rebels, but the government dismisses the concept.
The rebels are also expected to say that the price for an imminent cease-fire proposal, due to be submitted early next week, is the suspension of the military component of Plan Colombia.
The government's peace commissioner Camilo Gomez on Thursday denied suggestions that Europe and Washington were divided over how best to aid Colombia. "There are no walls in the fight against world drug problems," he said.
Correspondent Steve Nettleton and Reuters contributed to this report.
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