Pubdate: Fri, 08 Dec 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Juan Forero COLOMBIAN'S PEACE PURSUIT: PART CARROT, PART STICK NewsAnalysis BOGOTA, Colombia, Dec. 7 -- His peace efforts faltered. Guerrillas stepped up their attacks. A greater number of Colombians clamored for a harder line against rebels, who have waged war for 36 years. But President Andres Pastrana, who won office promising to bring peace to this divided country, decided late on Wednesday to offer the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, another concession. After feverish meetings with government ministers and several foreign ambassadors, Mr. Pastrana's government said the rebels could extend their hold a while longer, until Jan. 31, on a large swath of territory that the government ceded to them in 1998 as a peace gesture, though squeezing the rebels with new restrictions. An extension may have been the president's only viable alternative. By allowing the rebels to continue their oversight of a 16,000-square- mile zone in the southern province of Caqueta, Mr. Pastrana was forcefully prodding them to peace negotiations that they froze just over three weeks ago, complaining that the government was not doing enough to curb paramilitary forces, which are the rebels' nemesis. "Even though the talks are now frozen, you're still in a peace process, and it's important that you try to negotiate," Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said on a visit to Colombia last week. "I suppose there is a time when you say, `All bets are off, it's over and this goes in another direction, all-out military conflict.' But it seems to me that it has to be a very, very high threshold before you do that." Indeed, had Mr. Pastrana decided to end the demilitarized zone, it would have meant abandoning peace efforts and dislodging a well- equipped rebel ar my that has become firmly rooted. "To do away with it would be doing away with the most important program of the Pastrana administration, which is the peace process," said Armando Borrero, a political scientist and former national security adviser to President Ernesto Samper, who was Mr. Pastrana's predecessor. Still, no one is arguing that the talks have produced much in the way of tangible results or that the outlook is rosy. Supporters of Mr. Pastrana's administration say he has taken great steps to build an environment of trust in which peace talks could flourish. In early November, he announced the creation of a peace coalition with the opposition leader Horacio Serpa. In recent speeches, the president has also spoken passionately about the need to resume talks and avoid war. The short time frame is meant to put pressure on the rebels, giving them a closing window for rejoining peace talks. Right now they have been at a peak of their strength, but their critics say that the paramilitary forces are pounding them and that government actions to take away their drug trade are bound to have some effect. In talks leading up to the decision Wednesday, Mr. Pastrana consulted a cross section of government officials and others familiar with the conflict to shore up political support. Senator Samuel Moreno, an independent who is a recent addition to Mr. Pastrana's Common Front for Peace, said, "What I consider positive is that the peace process has become an agenda of the state, not just of this government." Yet many in Colombia and in Washington continued to argue today that the demilitarized zone has resulted in little more than a safe haven for the rebels to stage attacks, hold kidnapping victims and cultivate coca. "The Colombian government, regrettably during this long, drawn-out process, has become weaker and the FARC has become stronger," Representative Benjamin A. Gilman, Republican of New York, said today. He is chairman of the International Relations Committee and an architect of the large American financial commitment to Colombia's anti-drug programs. "The Pastrana government should end the fiction of a peace process that's going on in the demilitarized zone," he said. Many in Colombia have come to agree. In a poll published on Sunday in El Tiempo, Colombia's leading paper, 76 percent of those surveyed said the government should not extend the demilitarized zone, and 88 percent said the demilitarized zone had served no useful purpose. Mr. Pastrana and his ministers did not ignore those concerns. The government, which had offered six-month extensions on the demilitarized zone in the past, limited this extension to 55 days. The government also promised to restrict entry into the zone, to monitor incoming flights and to ensure that chemicals used for processing cocaine not be allowed to enter. "All this sends a message that Pastrana does not accept FARC's recalcitrance," Mr. Borrero said. The president's message, he added, is that "peace is valued but that the demilitarized zone is not indefinite." Officials said the president assessed such problems as the recruitment by the rebels of teenage fighters and their use of the territory to mount offensives, but came back to the option that has been the centerpiece of his administration, the search for a negotiated settlement. Representative William Delahunt of Massachusetts, a Democrat on the International Relations Committee who has visited Colombia and met with the rebels, said: "If you're talking, windows of opportunity will present themselves. If you're not talking, windows of opportunities will pass by, unnoticed." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens