Colombian President Extends Deadline for Revival of Peace Talks
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
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