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Pastrana urges rebels to give peace a chance

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- President Andres Pastrana, seeking to pull Colombia's peace process back from the brink of collapse, urged Marxist rebels Thursday to restart negotiations they broke off in an angry protest against his government.

"What we're hoping is that the FARC will return to the negotiating table," said Pastrana, referring to Latin America's largest and oldest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

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"What the Colombian people are hoping for are gestures and acts of peace from the FARC," added Pastrana, who spoke in an interview with the U.S.-based Spanish-language television network Telemundo.

Excerpts from the interview were made available to local and foreign media outlets by Pastrana's press office.

Pastrana -- who has made efforts to bring peace to his Andean homeland the centerpiece of his administration -- offered bold concessions to bring the 17,000-strong FARC into formal negotiations nearly two years ago.

But the talks stalled in their earliest stages, and the rebel army, which political analysts say is stronger and more recalcitrant than ever, plunged the government into crisis Tuesday by saying it was indefinitely suspending peace talks.

Laying the blame on Pastrana, the FARC said he had failed to make good on promises to halt "terrorism" by ultra-right paramilitary groups and was paving the way toward a Vietnam-style, U.S. military intervention in Colombia.

Even before Tuesday, the powerful insurgency said that Pastrana's so-called Plan Colombia would likely derail efforts to reach a negotiated settlement of an increasingly brutal conflict that has taken 35,000 lives since 1990.

Under the plan, which is backed by a package of $1.3 billion in mostly military aid from the United States, state security forces are preparing a major offensive against illicit drug crops and long-standing FARC strongholds in southern Colombia.

Pastrana has declared a Switzerland-sized area of Colombia's southern jungle and savanna off-limits to security forces since November 1998, to create a safe haven where rebel commanders would feel at ease as they engaged in protracted discussions about myriad problems underlying Colombia's war.

But the security forces and some of Pastrana's own Cabinet ministers have accused the FARC of making a mockery of the peace process, by using the 16,000-square-mile enclave as a staging ground for drugs and arms smuggling and hit-and-run attacks across the country.

Pastrana, who has been widely criticized as weak and naive, must decide by a self-imposed December 7 deadline whether to extend the land-for-peace deal. If he chooses to reassert government authority over the demilitarized zone, by dispatching troops to oust deeply entrenched FARC fighters, it would likely to sound the death knell for his peace efforts.

Underscoring the seriousness of that decision, and of possible bipartisan efforts to get negotiations with the FARC back on track, government officials announced late Thursday that Pastrana was postponing a planned official visit later this month to Germany, Norway and Sweden.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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