Pubdate: Fri, 08 Dec 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service

COLOMBIA EXTENDS DMZ FOR 2 MONTHS

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 7 - Colombian President Andres Pastrana, seeking 
to preserve a faltering peace process at an important moment for his 
U.S.-backed anti-drug strategy, has agreed to maintain for two more months 
a demilitarized zone in the southern Colombian jungle that has been the 
venue for meetings with leftist guerrillas.

Pastrana has been under pressure from opposition leaders and some members 
of his own party to move the army back into the Switzerland-size area 
unless the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rejoins the peace 
talks it left last month. The demilitarized zone, scheduled to expire 
today, has become a safe haven, military staging ground and 
drug-cultivation center for the FARC since a newly elected Pastrana created 
it two years ago to revive the peace process.

In a brief announcement late Wednesday night in Bogota, the capital, 
Pastrana's chief peace negotiator, Camilo Gomez, said the area will remain 
clear of troops until the end of January in an effort to "defrost" the 
peace process. Today, Gomez announced an agreement with the FARC, the 
largest of Colombia's leftist guerrilla groups, to exchange at least 10 
sick prisoners, the first phase of an accord that could eventually affect 
more than 500 police officers and soldiers held captive in the 
demilitarized zone.

The FARC did not agree to other government demands, including a cease-fire 
for the Christmas season. But the extension, one of the shortest Pastrana 
has granted, suggested he may use the next eight weeks to prepare Colombia 
for a decision to eliminate the demilitarized zone unless the peace talks 
progress.

"I would not hesitate to make the necessary decisions to ensure Colombia's 
public order, justice and institutions," Pastrana said today during an army 
promotion ceremony in Bogota.

Canceling the demilitarized zone would effectively end the peace process 
and force the strained Colombian army to retake the area, a feat many 
military analysts and diplomats say may be impossible. A FARC leader, 
Alfonso Cano, warned this week that the zone prevents "total war" in Colombia.

The United States, which has begun sending $1.3 billion in military and 
social development aid to Colombia, did not publicly press Pastrana on 
whether to renew the zone. But senior U.S. officials have raised concerns 
about its effectiveness. Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering said 
it is difficult to defend, and drug-policy director Barry R. McCaffrey said 
"it has become an armed bastion of the FARC."

But Colombia's European allies and its own peace-advocacy groups have urged 
Pastrana to keep the area clear, fearing that failing to would worsen the 
violence.

Despite the FARC's departure from the peace talks, Gomez has continued to 
meet with guerrilla officials, including a rare visit this month with FARC 
leader Manuel Marulanda. Proponents of the demilitarized zone say those 
talks, which appear to have led to today's prisoner-exchange agreement, 
would have been impossible without the safe haven.

"The preservation of the process is very important to many people," said a 
U.S. diplomat in Bogota. "Without the process, hope has no place to reside. 
If this becomes a government seen as committed only to war, then it gives 
credence to all the accusations the FARC has raised about Plan Colombia."

The renewal comes at an important time for Plan Colombia, the U.S.-backed 
anti-drug strategy Pastrana is counting on to strengthen his hand at the 
peace table. The FARC, with about 17,000 militiamen, derives much of its 
funding from the drug trade; depriving the FARC of that revenue, Pastrana 
has said, would force the group to accept peace.

In the southern province of Putumayo, a FARC stronghold where more than 
half of Colombia's coca is grown, 700 farmers signed up this month to 
participate in the plan's crop-substitution program. Although most of the 
program's $7.5 billion will finance the military, Pastrana has said its 
success will depend on whether farmers give up growing illegal crops for 
less lucrative ones. The government plans to subsidize those efforts early 
on, in exchange for promises not to return to coca cultivation.

Also, after months of heightened violence before the start of Plan 
Colombia's military component, the second of three U.S.-trained anti-drug 
battalions is scheduled to graduate this week. That will add 700 troops to 
government raids against more than 100,000 acres of coca crops, much of it 
controlled by the FARC in the Vermont-size southern province.
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