DRUGS TOP PEACE AGENDA Paul Brown in Bogota

Ending the cocaine trade and the environmental destruction it causes will
be the Colombian government's priority in the peace talks with guerrillas
which open today, President Andres Pastrana has revealed.

Mr Pastrana, in his first year in office, has taken a gamble by conceding
an area of 78,000 sq km (30,000 sq miles) to the control of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), to stop the civil war while
the talks take place.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, he said he was convinced that,
after 40 years of war, Farc's guerrillas were prepared for peace. But it
was bound to be a long and difficult process to "turn them back into
civilians".

"The drug trade has to stop if the peace process is to succeed," he said.
"Ending the trade and the environmental destruction it causes are absolute
preconditions for a new era.

"I am not saying that the guerrillas produce the cocaine, but they live
from drugs. They tax the traffickers, they allow the poppy fields to grow
for the heroine. The guerrillas must erase this trade as a condition for
being part of the political process and playing a role in government."

Mr Pastrana, who was kidnapped and escaped from a guerrilla group earlier
in his political career while standing for election as mayor of Bogota, has
withdrawn the army from the rebel zone. He has created a special civil
police force for the area, whose job it is to clamp down on crime and civil
disorder but treat Farc members as ordinary citizens.

Farc is led by Manuel Marulanda, who has become a legend after being
reported killed many times by the armed forces, only to reappear. In a
dramatic gesture 11 months ago when he was president-elect, Mr Pastrana
flew a microlight aircraft into the jungle to meet Mr Marulanda and begin
the peace process.

Each leader has appointed five negotiators, who will have a "technical"
committee of 10 Colombian citizens to oversee their agreement.

Farc represents 70% of the guerrillas in Colombia; the other 30% belong to
a more fragmented organisation, the National Liberation Army (ELN), which
has indulged in a wave of headline-grabbing hostage-taking to try to claim
a place at the peace negotiations. The president has excluded them until
they release all the hostages "unharmed, without pre-conditions and without
payment".

Despite the difficulties and a peace tax imposed this month on the
wealthiest 15,000 Colombians, to raise pounds 1bn for planting non-drug
crops and carrying out housing, health and other infrastructure projects in
rebel-held areas, Mr Pastrana's efforts remain popular. Last week a peace
march in Bogota, organised partly by the relatives of the kidnapped and
disappeared, attracted 250,000 marchers in a capital not given to political
demonstrations.

The president said that once the peace talks were seen to be succeeding,
and the drug traf fic to the United States and Europe was substantially
reduced, he would appeal for a "sort of Marshall plan" to provide people in
the drug areas with alternative ways of making a living.

"Aid for alternative industries is the best way to cut off the drugs trade;
I am sure the EU will be happy with that if we succeed," he said.

He added: "We have we been watching events in Northern Ireland and learning
what we can about peace talks. One thing we have learnt is not to set
deadlines, they do not work. In Colombia we first have to build trust. Each
side has to believe that promises made can be kept, and agreements delivered."

Although there are no deadlines, Mr Pastrana has the power to continue or
cancel the series of confidence-building 90-day amnesty periods, the third
of which starts today with the beginning of the negotiations proper.

If the talks make progress, the president said, he planned to extend the
periods to six months each. "By 2002 [when his term of office ends] we hope
the peace is concluded."