PASTRANA, REBEL LEADER TO MEET

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- President Andres Pastrana agreed Saturday to meet
with the nation's top guerrilla leader next week, and extended a guerrilla
enclave in southern Colombia for at least four more days to save peace talks.

The president said he will meet with Manuel Marulanda, the founder and
leader of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, on
Thursday somewhere inside the guerrilla's Switzerland-sized enclave,
according to a letter read Saturday by Pastrana's peace envoy, Camilo Gomez.

Gomez said the zone will be extended ``for the time necessary to hold the
meeting,'' but didn't set a new deadline.

Later Saturday, Pastrana made a surprise visit with Gomez to San Vicente
del Caguan, the main town inside the guerrilla-controlled enclave. The
president told reporters he was there to talk with residents about ``their
anxieties and worries.''

Pastrana has been under pressure either to end the guerrilla enclave or to
secure a peace concession from the guerrillas. Hundreds of soldiers have
been dispatched to the edge of the five-township haven in case last-minute
attempts to salvage negotiations fail. Residents inside the enclave fear
that if the talks end, there will be a blood bath.

The renewal Saturday was the second time this week the government has
extended the enclave.

On Wednesday, Pastrana renewed the zone through midnight Sunday and
requested a meeting with Marulanda before that date. But two-days later,
Marulanda said Sunday was too soon to make the necessary security and
logistical arrangements, and proposed meeting on Thursday instead.

It will be the third time Pastrana and Marulanda have met. The two are
expected to discuss a prisoner exchange, right-wing paramilitary groups,
and Plan Colombia -- Pastrana's drug-fighting initiative backed by $1.3
billion from Washington that the FARC believe is a plan for war.

The aid package provides the government with troop-training and dozens of
combat helicopters. The U.S.-trained counternarcotics troops have already
begun an offensive into cocaine-producing territory in southern Colombia to
destroy the drug crops that are a major source of the FARC's financing.

Pastrana withdrew soldiers and police from the guerrilla haven in 1998 to
coax the 15,000-strong rebel army into peace talks. But after more than two
years, the negotiations have achieved nothing.

The FARC suspended the talks on Nov. 14 to protest the government's alleged
failure to fight right-wing paramilitary groups. The paramilitary United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, killed more than 170 people last
month as part of its brutal campaign to rid the country of leftist guerrillas.

The 37-year armed conflict has killed some 35,000 people in the last decade
alone.