COLOMBIA EXTENDS DMZ FOR 2 MONTHS

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 7 - Colombian President Andres Pastrana, seeking
to preserve a faltering peace process at an important moment for his
U.S.-backed anti-drug strategy, has agreed to maintain for two more months
a demilitarized zone in the southern Colombian jungle that has been the
venue for meetings with leftist guerrillas.

Pastrana has been under pressure from opposition leaders and some members
of his own party to move the army back into the Switzerland-size area
unless the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rejoins the peace
talks it left last month. The demilitarized zone, scheduled to expire
today, has become a safe haven, military staging ground and
drug-cultivation center for the FARC since a newly elected Pastrana created
it two years ago to revive the peace process.

In a brief announcement late Wednesday night in Bogota, the capital,
Pastrana's chief peace negotiator, Camilo Gomez, said the area will remain
clear of troops until the end of January in an effort to "defrost" the
peace process. Today, Gomez announced an agreement with the FARC, the
largest of Colombia's leftist guerrilla groups, to exchange at least 10
sick prisoners, the first phase of an accord that could eventually affect
more than 500 police officers and soldiers held captive in the
demilitarized zone.

The FARC did not agree to other government demands, including a cease-fire
for the Christmas season. But the extension, one of the shortest Pastrana
has granted, suggested he may use the next eight weeks to prepare Colombia
for a decision to eliminate the demilitarized zone unless the peace talks
progress.

"I would not hesitate to make the necessary decisions to ensure Colombia's
public order, justice and institutions," Pastrana said today during an army
promotion ceremony in Bogota.

Canceling the demilitarized zone would effectively end the peace process
and force the strained Colombian army to retake the area, a feat many
military analysts and diplomats say may be impossible. A FARC leader,
Alfonso Cano, warned this week that the zone prevents "total war" in Colombia.

The United States, which has begun sending $1.3 billion in military and
social development aid to Colombia, did not publicly press Pastrana on
whether to renew the zone. But senior U.S. officials have raised concerns
about its effectiveness. Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering said
it is difficult to defend, and drug-policy director Barry R. McCaffrey said
"it has become an armed bastion of the FARC."

But Colombia's European allies and its own peace-advocacy groups have urged
Pastrana to keep the area clear, fearing that failing to would worsen the
violence.

Despite the FARC's departure from the peace talks, Gomez has continued to
meet with guerrilla officials, including a rare visit this month with FARC
leader Manuel Marulanda. Proponents of the demilitarized zone say those
talks, which appear to have led to today's prisoner-exchange agreement,
would have been impossible without the safe haven.

"The preservation of the process is very important to many people," said a
U.S. diplomat in Bogota. "Without the process, hope has no place to reside.
If this becomes a government seen as committed only to war, then it gives
credence to all the accusations the FARC has raised about Plan Colombia."

The renewal comes at an important time for Plan Colombia, the U.S.-backed
anti-drug strategy Pastrana is counting on to strengthen his hand at the
peace table. The FARC, with about 17,000 militiamen, derives much of its
funding from the drug trade; depriving the FARC of that revenue, Pastrana
has said, would force the group to accept peace.

In the southern province of Putumayo, a FARC stronghold where more than
half of Colombia's coca is grown, 700 farmers signed up this month to
participate in the plan's crop-substitution program. Although most of the
program's $7.5 billion will finance the military, Pastrana has said its
success will depend on whether farmers give up growing illegal crops for
less lucrative ones. The government plans to subsidize those efforts early
on, in exchange for promises not to return to coca cultivation.

Also, after months of heightened violence before the start of Plan
Colombia's military component, the second of three U.S.-trained anti-drug
battalions is scheduled to graduate this week. That will add 700 troops to
government raids against more than 100,000 acres of coca crops, much of it
controlled by the FARC in the Vermont-size southern province.