COLOMBIA PEACE COMMISSION TO URGE CEASE-FIRE

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia's leading newspaper reported Sunday
that a peace commission will urge warring parties in Colombia's
decades-old armed conflict to declare a cease-fire this week.

If accepted, the proposal would require the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC - the nation's largest rebel army - to renounce
its practice of extortion and kidnapping. It would oblige the
government to curb violence sponsored by rightist paramilitaries and
to halt indiscriminate fumigation of drug crops.

The drug sprayings - funded through part of a $1.3 billion U.S. aid
package - are the backbone of Washington's drug war in Colombia, the
world's biggest supplier of cocaine. The sprayings are a prerequisite
of further U.S. support.

Members of the civilian peace commission told El Tiempo that the
six-month proposed truce would spur peace accords to end 37 years of
fighting, which kills at least 3,000 people a year.

"If it's accepted, it would give a huge boost to the peace process,"
Daniel Garcia-Pena, a former government peace envoy, told The
Associated Press on Sunday.

During a February peace summit, President Andres Pastrana and Manuel
Marulanda, chief of the FARC, agreed to create the "Commission of
Notables," as the three-member committee is called.

It wasn't clear what day the commission would propose the truce -
which would begin in December. Attempts to reach members for comment
Sunday were unsuccessful.

The proposal comes at a low point in the nearly three-year peace
negotiations, with many Colombians deeply skeptical of the guerrillas'
desire for peace.

Terrorist attacks in the United States have increased pressure on the
Colombian government to take back a Switzerland-sized safe haven it
ceded to the 16,000-strong FARC to launch talks. A decision to end the
zone would probably be the death knell for negotiations.

Meanwhile Sunday, a kidnapped German who allegedly escaped from the
FARC after two months in captivity said he will return to his native
country soon.

Even though the army and a spokesman for the German Embassy have said
Thomas Kuenzel, 48, broke loose from his captors and fled to safety,
the leader of a southwestern Indian reservation where Kuenzel was
found said he had been voluntarily freed by the rebels.

During a brief news conference Sunday in Bogota, Kuenzel declined to
comment on his release or the fate of his brother, Ulrich, and a
friend, Reiner Bruchmann. Rebels abducted the three men on July 18
from southwestern Cauca province.