SOME HOPEFUL SIGNS AS COLOMBIA MEETS WITH REBELS AND ENVOYS

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 10 -- When the government ceded land to
Colombia's largest rebel group in 1998 as a peace gesture, the rebels
declined to allow international monitors into the area. And in two
years of peace talks, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, has been cold to the idea of foreign participation in peace talks.

So when the rebels met with envoys from 25 countries on Thursday and
agreed that a small group of nations could serve as facilitators in
future peace negotiations, diplomats and analysts celebrated. The
rebels' acceptance of a group of observer nations, analysts said, is a
sign that a rebel group long suspicious of foreign involvement is open
to some degree of international participation in the peace efforts.

"Little by little, the idea of international participation is growing
on them; I think it's a forward step in the process," said Daniel
Garcia- Pena, the government's former peace negotiator. "You have to
remember that the FARC is very rural, very nationalistic. For them,
the United Nations is an organization led by the Yankees." The foreign
diplomats, meeting with the rebel leader Manuel Marulanda and
government negotiators deep in rebel-held territory, agreed to create
a 10- nation group that would meet with the rebels and the government
every two months.

The group -- to consist of Cuba, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Mexico,
Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Venezuela -- would not have a direct
role in peace negotiations. And Mr. Marulanda continued to insist that
a resolution to Colombia's 37- year-old conflict could only be
achieved by Colombians. Still, despite the group's limited role,
diplomats and analysts said the new development was good news for a
peace effort that has been marked more by broken promises and
unilateral walkouts than fruitful dialogue.

"The important thing is that now there are international mechanisms to
track the peace process in Colombia," said Jan Egeland, United Nations
special envoy to Colombia.

The visit by the envoys was agreed upon last month, during an
extraordinary meeting between President Andres Pastrana and Mr.
Marulanda designed to restart peace negotiations. The envoys, all
diplomats or ambassadors, came from Europe, Latin America, Japan and
Canada; the United States declined to attend.

Many of the countries represented are opposed to American military aid
to Colombia, which makes up most of a $1.1 billion United States
contribution to Plan Colombia. Foreign governments, particularly the
Europeans, have pledged hundreds of millions in loans and grants for
social development projects.

The meeting on Thursday provided the rebels with a forum in which to
stress the importance of development aid. The rebels' hope, experts
said, was to prod for an expansion of such assistance and to sway
foreign governments against American plans for military aid to
Colombia's government, said Vicente Torrijos, a political scientist at
the Universidad del Rosario in Bogota.

The rebels were also able to express their frustration with
defoliation of coca, Colombia's military buildup and the ties between
paramilitary killers and the state security forces. "It was a chance
for them to give their side of the story," said Russell Crandall, an
American political scientist in Bogota.

The gathering also gave the international community the chance to
raise concerns about the rebels' use of homemade bombs, its
recruitment of child soldiers and its dependence on kidnappings to
finance its war.