COLOMBIA'S ROAD TO PEACE EXPECTED TO BE HARD

The Government And Rebels Agreed To Resume Peace Talks, But The Same
Difficult Obstacles To Ending The War Remain

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA Despite optimism generated by an agreement to resume
peace talks in Colombia, the government and rebels face an arduous task in
negotiating an end to the nation's 37-year war.

After a two-day summit in rebel territory, President Andres Pastrana and
Manuel Marulanda, chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, pledged Friday to continue the peace talks.

The two sides are to meet again Wednesday, but it could take years to
negotiate an end to the war, which kills about 3,000 people a year. It is
unclear whether either side is willing to make the substantive concessions
necessary to end the war.

"It's a very complex situation," Daniel Garcia-Pena, a former government
peace envoy, said in an interview yesterday. "We can't expect that these
issues will be resolved overnight."

In the Los Pozos Agreement, signed by Pastrana and Marulanda, the FARC said
it would resume negotiations it suspended three months ago. After the pact
was signed, the government agreed to extend until Oct. 9 the decree that
created the rebel zone in southern Colombia where the talks were held.

The warring sides vowed to hasten a humanitarian exchange of sick prisoners
and to create a panel to recommend ways to curb the nation's violent
right-wing paramilitary group.

"The talks went well for the country, for the president, and the FARC,"
Horacio Serpa, leader of the opposition Liberal Party, said in a statement
published yesterday in El Espectador newspaper.

But when the two sides resume negotiations Wednesday, they will confront
the same entanglements that have frustrated peace talks since they began
two years ago.

Analysts say the most difficult issue involves the right-wing paramilitary,
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which has massacred suspected rebel
supporters. The paramilitary's alleged ties to the government prompted the
FARC to suspend talks in November. Observers say the current administration
has done more than previous governments to battle the 8,000-strong
paramilitary. But they add that much of the work will depend on the army,
which has in the past lacked the will to get tough with the militias. Many
former soldiers belong to these militias.

Some government military units allegedly assist paramilitary gunmen as they
carry out attacks.

If a cease-fire agreement is ever achieved, the two sides would then have
to negotiate FARC demands for sweeping agrarian reform and major economic
restructuring - an agenda they have not even begun to discuss.

Some analysts say the militias would have to be included in negotiations in
order for peace to be achieved.

"If you sign a cease-fire agreement with one group but the other groups
continue the fighting, it makes things very difficult," Garcia-Pena said.

The government appears close to opening talks with the smaller leftist
rebel group, the National Liberation Army. However, giving Carlos Castano,
head of the right-wing paramilitary, a chair at the bargaining table is a
scenario the rebels would find hard to swallow.

An eventual cease-fire agreement would also hinge on the FARC's willingness
to scale back on kidnappings and its links to cocaine production, which
reportedly earns the 16,000-member insurgency hundreds of millions of
dollars a year.

Washington is providing the Colombian government with troop training and
military hardware through a $1.3 billion aid package to fight the nation's
cocaine-producing industry, centered in southern Colombia. Both governments
say the major target in their drug war is the FARC.

Meanwhile, the war is grinding on, with U.S.-trained Colombian soldiers
seizing areas where coca, the raw ingredient of cocaine, is grown, to make
flyovers safe for fumigation planes.