US BACKS COLOMBIAN PEACE EFFORTS - PASTRANA

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - A high-level U.S. diplomatic team has
expressed support for the Colombian government's faltering attempts
to talk peace with leftist rebels, President Andres Pastrana said on
Thursday.

The delegation, led by U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political
Affairs Marc Grossman, had been expected to push the government for a
tougher line with Marxist FARC rebels.

But Pastrana said his meeting with Grossman soon after his arrival on
Wednesday yielded continued U.S. support both for his peace strategy
and for the ``Plan Colombia'' anti-drug drive backed by $1 billion in
mainly military U.S. aid approved under former U.S. President Bill
Clinton.

``I think that his declarations have been very clear in support for
our country, for the policies we are pursuing, for the policies of
Plan Colombia, for the peace process,'' Pastrana told reporters.

Pastrana must decide by Oct. 7 whether to extend the life of a
demilitarized enclave as big as Switzerland in southern Colombia
which he granted the FARC -- Spanish initials for Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia -- at the start of peace talks 2-1/2 years ago.

Critics, including the United States, say the FARC uses the enclave
for imprisoning kidnap victims and for running drug smuggling
operations. Security forces are not allowed to enter the zone.

Colombia's war has dragged on for 37 years, and claimed 40,000 mainly
civilian lives in the past decade alone.

Pastrana said the Americans ``insisted that illegal (armed groups)
have to provide concrete evidence that they are interested in the
negotiation process.''

War Rages As Grossman Tours Base

Grossman, who has made only brief comments to reporters and is
preparing the ground for a visit here by Secretary of State Colin
Powell from September 11-12, was touring the Tres Esquinas military
base in southern Colombia on Thursday.

``In his meeting with President Pastrana, Undersecretary Grossman
reiterated our full support for his efforts to achieve peace in
Colombia,'' said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher in
Washington.

Controversy over crop-spraying programs at the heart of Plan Colombia
has also grown here. Small peasant growers of coca leaf, the raw
material for cocaine, complain that chemical fumigation destroys
their livelihood and their health.

Combat raged around the country on Thursday, and the army said it had
killed 26 guerrillas, mainly from the FARC, in different clashes.

Pastrana's attempts to negotiate peace with the 17,000-member FARC,
the country's largest rebel force, are in one of their most toughest
moments.

Always prickly contacts became more difficult in mid-July, when, in
separate incidents, the guerrillas kidnapped three German aid workers
and seized a former provincial governor from a marked U.N. vehicle.

Further anti-FARC outrage flared in August, when soldiers arrested
three suspected Irish Republican Army members accused of teaching the
guerrillas how to make sophisticated bombs.

Pastrana hopes to have steered Colombia onto a path to peace by the
time his successor is elected in next May's election. But, in another
blow to his efforts, government contacts with a smaller rebel group,
the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army or ELN, broke down in
August.