COLOMBIAN FACTIONS MEET, BUT REBEL GROUP BOYCOTTS

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- The Colombian government, rebels, U.N. delegates and
human rights organizations opened a summit Monday hoping to stem the
savagery of the country's 36-year civil conflict. But the largest guerrilla
group failed to attend.

Colombia's main leftist rebel army -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC -- sorely disappointed organizers by not attending the
opening.

Major breakthroughs had not been expected, but the planned presence of
almost all of the conflict's armed factions had been seen as a victory in
itself.

"This is a first step -- and who knows what might happen," said Jorge Rojas,
a leader of Colombia Peace, an umbrella group of human rights and other
organizations that arranged the three-day conference.

Rojas spoke before learning of the FARC no-show, which dampened even guarded
expectations about the event -- still being attended by representatives of
Colombia's second-biggest rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN.

The summit got under way in this tropical Central American city despite the
last-minute rebel cancellation.

Special Costa Rican police dressed in black jumpsuits guarded the entrance
to a hotel where Cabinet members of the Colombian government, human rights
groups, U.N. representatives and others gathered inside. Brightly colored
macaws screeched in the lobby and delegates fought for meeting space in a
casino filling up with gamblers and diners.

An official of the U.S. government, which has a growing role in Colombia,
attended as an observer.

U.S. Special Forces troops are training Colombian army battalions which will
be tasked with wresting control of cocaine- and heroin-producing plantations
from leftist rebels. The rebels tax and protect the plantations in return
for multimillion-dollar payoffs.

The U.S. training is part of a $1.3 billion aid package for Colombian
President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, an initiative aimed at wiping out
drug trafficking from Colombia and strengthening its democracy. Activists
and local Colombian officials attending the conference object to Plan
Colombia, saying it focuses too much on the military aspect and will
intensify the civil war.

"You can't just come and spray, that's not the solution," Manuel Alzate,
mayor of the southern town Puerto Asis, said of the U.S.-backed
counternarcotics strategy, which relies heavily on forced spraying of
peasant drug plots with herbicides.

Alzate said peasant farmers in Puerto Asis, a hub of the main southern
coca-growing state of Putumayo, are willing to rip up their drug plots
voluntarily in return for government aid to grow legal crops.

"I expect to hear a lot of criticism about the U.S. assistance package," the
U.S. diplomat, Leslie Bassett, said in an interview.

Washington has barred Bassett from meeting directly with either the FARC or
the ELN.

Two years ago, a top Washington envoy initiated contacts with the FARC, but
they were cut off after the rebels killed three Americans who were working
with a Colombian Indian tribe in March 1999.

Washington says there will be no further contacts with the FARC until the
killers and those who ordered the murders are handed over for trial. There
have never been talks between the United States and the ELN, according to
Bassett.