COLOMBIA SAYS TALKS HAVE FAILED, AND REBELS GET ULTIMATUM

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador --- President Andres Pastrana of Colombia announced
tonight that peace negotiations with the country's largest rebel group had
stalled, and he gave the guerrillas 48 hours to withdraw from a huge
demilitarized zone the government ceded to them during three years of talks.

Although Mr. Pastrana, speaking on national television, did not rule out
negotiations in the future, the armed forces went on high alert and were
awaiting orders to dislodge the guerrillas from the safe zone, an area the
size of Switzerland in southern Colombia.

Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, angrily
denied they had walked away from the peace talks.

But the president, in the strongest words he has used against the FARC,
said that the rebels "continue placing obstacles in the way of the peace
process, making it impossible to go forward." It was a stunning turnabout
for Mr. Pastrana, who had staked his presidency on ending the brutal
37-year conflict.

"To negotiate, you need two," Mr. Pastrana said, "and the sad reality is
that the FARC does not want to continue negotiating."

The rupture in the talks seemed likely to bring a quick escalation in a
conflict that pits Colombia's American-backed military against Latin
America's oldest and most powerful insurgency, a group with 17,000 members.

Bush administration officials have questioned Mr. Pastrana's efforts to
reach agreement with an organization they accuse of growing rich from the
cocaine trade. The United States gave Colombia more than $1.1 billion in
2000 for its battle against drugs.

The rebels, speaking earlier today from the hamlet of Los Pozos deep in
guerrilla-held territory, angrily denied that they had acted to break off
the talks, which had started up again in recent days after weeks of bickering.

Raul Reyes, a leading guerrilla commander and spokesman, read a statement
to reporters in which he accused the government of lying.

At 6 p.m., hours before Mr. Pastrana's announcement, Mr. Reyes, sitting
alone at the negotiating table in Los Pozos, said the rebels would not
leave the demilitarized zone until Jan. 20 at the earliest, the date Mr.
Pastrana had set to decide the future of the zone.

"We are now depending on the government," Mr. Reyes said, "but the FARC has
not gotten up from the negotiating table."

Many Colombians doubt that the guerrillas will leave the demilitarized zone
without a fight. And they feared that conflict might erupt across the nation.

"What is worrisome is what can happen in the rest of the country," said
Armando Borrero, who served as national security advisor to Mr. Pastrana's
predecessor, Ernesto Samper. He predicted that the FARC would launch an
offensive outside the safe haven to take pressure off rebels withdrawing
from the zone.

In recent months, the army had stepped up its patrols around the safe zone
and imposed new restrictions on access into the area. Those operations
became especially visible after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States
and the hardening of world opinion against armed insurgencies.

Military and government officials started calling the rebels "terrorists,"
rather than "bandits" or "criminals," as had been the practice. Foreigners
were banned from the region when three members of the Irish Republican Army
were arrested after visiting the FARC

The rebels began to chafe under the new restrictions and demanded that the
government pull back its forces.

Camilo Gomez, the government's top peace negotiator, said earlier today
that the government had continuously offered "proposals and alternatives"
in talks, but that the FARC insisted on discussing only the new military
controls.