COLOMBIA, IN RISKY MOVE, PLANS TO CEDE ZONE TO 2ND REBEL GROUP

SAN PABLO, Colombia, Jan. 22 — Two years ago, hoping to end more than 30
years of grinding civil war, President Andres Pastrana took the unusual
step of ceding a Switzerland-size region of land to the largest guerrilla
group in the country to lure it into peace talks.

The talks have gone nowhere. Even the government concedes that the
territory has been used to stage attacks elsewhere, hide kidnapping victims
and grow coca.

The rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are stronger
than ever, and Mr. Pastrana's government now faces the daunting prospect of
dislodging them from 16,000 square miles.

Yet it is a strategy that Mr. Pastrana is preparing to use again. Officials
say he is on the verge of granting a smaller sliver of land in and around
this northern town to the second largest rebel force, the National
Liberation Army.

His reasoning is the same — that pulling police and army units from the
territory offers the best chance to foster peace talks. What is different,
the government says, is that the liberation army is showing a willingness
to negotiate and that the group, weakened by attacks by paramilitary
forces, has more to lose than the Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC, by
not taking part in the peace effort.

But many people here say they are not so sure about that. They view the
plan as a risky proposition that could further bleed an already debilitated
government and pull the country into a deepening quagmire.

An array of forces — paramilitary groups that have gained at the rebels'
expense, ranchers, businessmen and poor farmers — have lined up against the
plan.

Weary residents say they are eager for any measure that may bring peace.
But they also fear being left defenseless against the guerrillas and say
they feel certain that the abuses that have been carried out in the first
rebel zone will recur in the new one, which would be about the size of
Delaware.

"This would be an irreversible act that would fracture the country," said
Alvaro Uribe, a presidential candidate whose popularity has skyrocketed
because of his hard-line stance toward both rebel groups. "I think the
alternative is that if you are going to negotiate with the E.L.N.," he
said, referring to the National Liberation Army, "you do so in a hotel, in
another country, but not in a clearance zone created for that purpose."

The government says it is taking steps to prevent the abuses that occurred
in the larger zone. The liberation army has agreed to allow 150 foreign and
Colombian monitors into the zone to investigate villagers' complaints. The
rebels say they will also let local officials like mayors work free of
intimidation. That has not been the case in the first zone.

"Like the government has always said, we have been discussing more than
just a zone, but the possibility of a peace process," the high commissioner
for peace, Camilo Gomez, said in an interview. "It is a process of peace
with a clear design, with clear signals on the part of an E.L.N. that wants
to advance a political solution."

Proponents of the plan and the rebels say that without a safe haven, the
rebels will not feel secure enough to sit down to talks. The liberation
army also says it wants a place where Colombians in public forums can feel
safe to voice their concerns.

"We need a secure place, a place with tranquillity," the military
strategist for the force, Antonio Garcia, said in a telephone interview.
"We need a stable scenario, where we can count on certain guarantees."

The creation of the zone is being driven in large part by the desire of Mr.
Pastrana, who won office on the promise of ending the war, to reach a peace
with at least one rebel group before presidential elections late next year.

"It's akin to Clinton's Middle East negotiations," said Larry Birns,
director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington and an expert
on Colombia. "His presidency will be identified with two things, the E.L.N.
negotiations and his peace efforts with the FARC. In order to have a
historical legacy, his policies have to prove out in one of these two areas."

Mr. Pastrana's efforts to make peace with the liberation army began early
last year, when he announced details of the plan. By spring, angry
residents of the region, the southern part of Bolivar Province, held noisy
demonstrations, blocking roads and delaying the plan.

Last month, talks in Cuba between the liberation army and government
negotiators began to bear fruit. The rebels released 42 captive soldiers
and police officers, and its elusive leader, Nicolas Rodriguez, became more
accommodating in public comments, telling RCN television that the peace
effort was irreversible and that his group was open to a regional
cease-fire, a proposal that the Revolutionary Armed Forces has refused.

Here in this river valley, a lush land of dense jungles, cattle farms, oil
refineries and some of the richest mineral deposits in Latin America,
opposition to the plan by officials and residents has not diminished, and
it appears to be overwhelming.

"We don't want it," said Levis del Carmen, 40, displaying his family's
ancient Remington rifle. "We'll take up arms if we have to. It doesn't
matter if the rebels have better arms. If we can hide, we'll get them when
they come in."

Interviews with government officials, human rights workers and dozens of
residents this month found a solid, if smaller, level of support for a
demilitarized zone in the smaller farming communities sprinkled across the
middle Magdalena River Valley, in the hope that such a zone would restore
calm to a region that has been buffeted in the triangular conflict among
the rebels, the government and paramilitary forces.

"Everything that we do for peace is welcome," said Cesar Emilio Palacio, a
farmer in Puerto Matilde, hours from here in the southeast of the planned
zone. "For us, for the Colombian people, we just want to end this violence.
We're up to our eyebrows in it, especially people here in the countryside."

A demilitarized zone, residents hope, will also mean the end of fighting by
paramilitary forces, in particular, the United Self-Defense Force of
Colombia, which Carlos Castano leads. Those forces have committed abuses
and moved into the coca trade as they have taken over territory from the
rebels in recent months.

"The guerrillas, for years, ran the area and they were the ones who made
the rules," said Bishop Jaime Prieto, who has lobbied for the demilitarized
zone from his base in a regional city, Barrancabermeja. "Now it's another
outlaw group, the Self-Defense Forces, and they are the ones who rule. And
the people are under the same kind of pressure."

Experts say the paramilitary groups have tried to whip up opposition to the
cease-fire as part of Mr. Castano's attempt to gain political recognition
for his group and the chance to take part in talks with the government, a
move that the government opposes.

Indeed, the paramilitaries have allies in local organizations like one
called No to the Clearance Zone and another named Asocipaz, whose leaders
have been instrumental in organizing protests.

"We'll defend ourselves," a leader of Asocipaz here, Javier Perez, said.
"We won't let this fall to the guerrillas. I think the only Colombians who
believe in this process are the president and the high commissioner for peace."

The obstacles to the government plan have in many ways been compounded by
the gains of the paramilitary groups, who are now highly unlikely to give
up the money they are reaping from their expanding coca trade without a fight.

Even proponents of the plan acknowledge that ceding territory to the rebels
is not a sure bet, as doubts swirl around the liberation army's commitment
to peace. The group, started by university students and peasants who
trained in Cuba in the early 1960's, had long vowed to topple the
government in the name of social justice. In the 1980's, when other rebel
groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces, opened serious talks with
the government, the liberation army stayed away.

In the mid-90's under the leadership of Manuel Perez, a defrocked Roman
Catholic priest who had rebuilt the splintered group, the liberation army
embarked on talks. Efforts for an accord, however, stalled when Mr. Perez
died in 1998, leaving the group fractured.

"One of the things that has been the strength and the weakness of the
E.L.N., perhaps, is that they don't take any decision in the central
command without what they call consensus," said Walter J. Broderick, writer
of "The Invisible Guerrilla," a biography of Mr. Perez. "They want everyone
to be on the same wavelength. That's one of the reasons why the whole
process has been slow."

When the government created the first demilitarized zone, creating an
impression that it was ignoring the liberation army, the alienated group
responded with mass kidnappings, an airliner hijacking and attacks on oil
pipelines, acts that cost them support. But in the last few weeks, signs
have emerged that the leadership of the group has reached a consensus on
peace talks.

"I think that we have to have a political solution," said a top commander
in Barrancabermeja, who goes by the nom de guerre Fabian Rodriguez. "We
can't keep this war on for another 50 years. No one would keep following
us. To look for a political resolution is to take a realistic approach that
matches the current situation."