Peace talks called off after rebels kidnap senator

From Karl Penhaul

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia (CNN) --In waves and under cover of
darkness early Friday, Colombian army Blackhawk helicopters ferried an
elite counter-insurgency unit to a military base that was controlled by
left-wing rebels until President Andres Pastrana ordered it reoccupied this
week.

Pastrana stopped peace talks Wednesday -- and ordered the Colombian military to
retake a region he ceded to the rebels in 1998 to promote peace talks -- after four
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas hijacked a commercial
plane and kidnapped opposition Liberal Party Sen. Jorge Eduardo Gechen, head of
the peace commission, who was a passenger.

With the peace process dead, Colombia braced for possible terrorist attacks not only
from the now-hidden leftist guerrillas but also from right-wing paramilitaries roaming
the countryside.

CNN's Karl Penhaul, outside the base about six miles northwest of San Vicente,
Colombian troops were checking the undergrowth and roads in the area for mines,
but had not moved toward the town, the major urban center of the
16,000-square-mile zone of jungle and plains called the despeje.

He said there had been no reports of fighting between the Colombian forces and
FARC guerrillas, nor any sign the rebels had withdrawn from the area completely.
Instead, Penhaul said, "The rebels are all around. They've just melted back to the
jungle and the savannah, into mobile hit-and-run groups."

The overnight troop transfer was backed by two AC-47 reconnaissance planes,
equipped with sophisticated infrared and heat-seeking equipment, and helicopter
gunships, CNN learned. The gunships fired shots periodically into the darkness
around the base.

The Colombian Air Force also flew more bombing raids late Thursday and into
Friday morning. There were some reports from people in Los Pozos, the main
center for the now-scuttled peace talks, who said they had witnessed civilian deaths
from the bombardment. Those reports, however, could not be immediately
confirmed.

Luis Moreno, Colombia's ambassador to the United States, defended the
government's actions. Pastrana, he said on CNN's "American Morning," "went the
extra hundred miles to try to bring peace to Colombia. He did everything. It was
really the FARC who decided to take this to a new level. ... They took the route of
terrorism."

A FARC spokesman in Mexico City, however, told CNN that Pastrana had made a
wrong move.

"There are mechanisms created specifically for crisis moments," Leon Calarca said
from Mexico City. "Unfortunately, he didn't use them. He provoked a situation that,
unfortunately, will have negative consequences for Colombians."

Calarca also said he was not certain FARC was involved in the hijacking and
kidnapping, adding that FARC's actions are not those of terrorists.

"We're victims of the aggression of the Colombian government," he said.

Still, Pastrana's actions won the support of the Organization of American States,
headed by former Colombian President Leon Gaviria. And the United Nation's
condemned FARC's "repeated violations of international humanitarian law" while
calling on all sides to end "all forms of violence."

The Colombian government is beleaguered by two Marxist guerrilla groups -- FARC
and the ELN (National Liberation Army) -- and the United Self-Defense Groups of
Colombia (AUC), a coalition of right-wing paramilitary groups that formed in the
1980s to defend villagers -- and in some cases drug traffickers -- from attacks by
the leftist groups. Recently, ties between the AUC and the Colombian military have
been brought to light.

Pastrana set aside the zone as a venue for peace talks aimed at ending the four-sided
civil war, which erupted in its current incarnation four decades ago but has at its
roots the conservative-liberal split that came about at Colombia's inception in the
19th century.

Pastrana's government and FARC had returned to the negotiating table only last
month with some hopes of meeting an April 7 target date for a cease-fire.

     -- CNN Correspondent Harris Whitbeck in Bogota contributed to this report