COLOMBIA: PRESIDENT ANDRES PASTRANA EXTENDS REBEL-CONTROLLED ZONE FOR THREE MONTHS.

Despite continuing violence and lack of progress at reaching a lasting peace accord, Colombian President Andres Pastrana extended the demilitarized zone in southern Colombia controlled by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaries de Colombia (FARC) until Jan. 20, 2002.

Pastrana first decreed the demilitarization of the area on Nov. 7, 1998, three months after he took office. It has been extended nine times since then.

Following the assassination of former culture minister Consuelo Araujo Noguera, Pastrana said he was "re-examining" whether to extend the zone. Araujo was kidnapped at a FARC roadblock Sept. 24 and her body was found six days later (see NotiSur, 2001-10-05).

Pastrana, who has spent much of his energy in office trying to negotiate peace, said on Oct. 3 he would consider the public's growing anger at the FARC when deciding on the rebel zone, nicknamed Farclandia.

Critics of the zone say it has not led to a meaningful peace agreement and has allowed the FARC to use the zone for holding kidnap victims and training recruits.

Pastrana and supporters of the zone say ending it would effectively end the peace process. "And that isn't the formula that is going to appeal to a government that has spent some of largest amounts of political capital in history on negotiating with the FARC," wrote Rodrigo Pardo, a former Colombian foreign minister, in the daily El Tiempo.

On Oct. 5, after two days of talks in Los Pozos within the rebel-controlled zone, the government and the FARC pulled the peace process out of the fire through a tentative agreement to immediately begin talks aimed at working out a cease-fire.

"We believe this agreement will change the course of the peace process," said government peace commissioner Camilo Gomez as he announced the accord.

In a nine-point statement read by Gomez and senior FARC commander Raul Reyes, the FARC agreed to immediately study a cease-fire proposal for a six-month, renewable truce.

"The peace process requires an adequate environment without armed confrontation between the parties," the joint statement read.

The agreement included a new agenda for the negotiations, pushing vague issues like poverty and unemployment to the back burner as negotiators concentrated on stopping the violence.

The agenda, proposed earlier by a three-member advisory commission, also includes increased government efforts against illegal rightist paramilitaries and the end of mass kidnappings by the FARC. The agreement is similar to one reached in February before the last deadline for the zone's renewal. The two sides pledged to intensify talks toward a cease-fire, but little progress resulted.

Pastrana expressed confidence that the San Francisco de la Sombra accord would quickly lead to talks about a cease- fire and allow the negotiating panel "to set up a timeline."

But Fernando Uricochea, professor at the Universidad Nacional, said that the demilitarization was extended only because the government was not in any condition to take any other decision.

Polls taken after the agreement was announced showed that most of the Colombians consulted feel that the peace talks are unsatisfactory and that there have not been significant advances, but that the extension may breathe new life into the process, Uricochea added.

Worries that US involvement may increase

Complicating the internal conflict in Colombia is the role of the US. The US State Department has designated the FARC, the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), and the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) as terrorist groups. Secretary of State Colin Powell has hinted that the groups "may have international reach."

As US President George W. Bush continues waging his war on terrorism, the possibility of shifting US focus in Colombia from drugs to "terrorists" could legitimize more direct US intervention in the Colombian struggle.

On Oct. 6, union leader and independent presidential candidate Luis Eduardo Garzon said the country risks a US military intervention in the short term, which, he said, would aggravate the conflict.

"That is a an inevitable short-term option and I don't agree with it at all, because every time the US and the UN interfere, the countries end up fragmented or dismembered. Look at Kosovo, Yugoslavia, and Macedonia," said Garzon.

The designated terrorist organizations in Colombia are a target of the global anti-terrorist campaign launched by the US, said State Department anti-terrorist coordinator Francis Taylor. For the first time, Washington admitted the possibility of using force against the groups.

Those groups will "get the same treatment as any other terrorist group in terms of our interest in going after them and ceasing their terrorist activities," Taylor told reporters at the Organization of American States (OAS), after attending a closed-door meeting on terrorism.

With greater concern about terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, US lawmakers will be less concerned about the difference between fighting terrorists and fighting guerrillas.

HRW accuses FARC, military, and AUC of abuses

New York-based human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently warned that close ties still exist between sectors of the armed forces and the paramilitary groups in Colombia. The country needs a "state policy at the highest level" to break those ties, said HRW Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco.

In a report released in Colombia and Washington on Oct. 3, HRW charged that the Colombian armed forces and police continue to work closely with the AUC.

The US position, evident during the debate regarding funding for Plan Colombia, "has allowed troops financed and trained by the US to freely mix with units that maintain strict ties with the paramilitaries," said Vivanco.

The report is particularly harsh about former US President Bill Clinton's decision last year to waive human rights conditions attached to the US$1.6 billion aid package, supporting Plan Colombia.

"Put simply, the message was that as long as the Colombian military cooperated with the US anti-drug strategy, American officials would waive human rights conditions and skirt their own human rights laws," the HRW report said.

The Attorney General, the Public Advocate, and the leadership of the national police in Bogota have taken action against the paramilitaries but "their actions have been consistently and effectively undermined, canceled out, or in some cases wholly reversed, by actions promoted by the military-paramilitary alliance," said the HRW report.

HRW "holds the Pastrana administration responsible for its dramatic and costly failure to take prompt, effective action to establish control over the security forces, break their persistent ties to paramilitary groups, and ensure respect for human rights."

HRW has also reiterated its findings that the FARC is violating international humanitarian law within the 42,000-sq km demilitarized zone. Vivanco said in Santa Fe de Bogota that it is essential to set up verification mechanisms to prevent the guerrilla group from continuing its abuses against the civilian population both inside and outside the zone.

"The FARC are constantly making public statements about human rights abuses, especially those committed by the other parties in the war," said Vivanco in an interview with Inter Press Service. "It's obvious that the paramilitaries and the state actors commit horrible abuses. But the FARC's practice is no better than the other parties."

Paramilitary threatens peace negotiators

On Oct. 6, Luis Alberto Pinzon, a member of the commission of distinguished citizens whose recommendation led to the agreement between the FARC and the government, left the country for Cuba after receiving numerous death threats from the paramilitary leader Carlos Castano.

"I have received many threats over the Internet and by telephone," said Pinzon. "There are definitely enemies of peace who force me to leave the country for my security."

Carlos Lozano, another member of the commission, said he has also received threats from Castano.

Meanwhile, the AUC went on a killing rampage that left 55 dead within a few days in the Rio Cauca valley southwest of Bogota during the week of Oct. 8. The massacres included 24 killed in the village of Buga. Presidential candidate Horacio Serpa said the AUC has killed 140 people during the past month, including two congressional deputies, Octavio Sarmiento and Luis Alfredo Colmenares. [Sources: La Opinion (Los Angeles), 10/04/01; Reuters, 10/04/01, 10/05/01; The Miami Herald, 10/06/01; Notimex, 10/05-07/01; Inter Press Service, 10/05/01, 10/08/01, 10/11/01; Spanish news service EFE, 10/06/01, 10/14/01; Associated Press, 10/06/01, 10/07/01, 10/10/01, 10/16/01; Clarin (Argentina), 10/16/01]