THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT

On the surface, everybody is on board for today's start of Colombia's
peace talks: not only President Andres Pastrana and Marxist rebel
leader Manuel "Sure Shot" Marulanda, but U.S., French and Cuban envoys
are scheduled to give their blessings to the opening talks.

But whatever the result of the negotiations, they may face a major
hurdle: the U.S. Congress.

The Republican congressional majority, which gives Colombia's drug
exports a high priority in its foreign policy agenda and will have a
major say in approving U.S. funding for a Colombian peace plan, is far
from happy with the ongoing peace process. At a time when Clinton
faces impeachment hearings and has little political clout to twist
arms in Congress, this could have a major impact on the talks' success.

Republicans criticize the Clinton administration for having held
secret talks with a representative of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC) in Costa Rica last month. The meeting between State
Department envoy Phil Chicola and a FARC representative violated a
U.S. policy of not talking to "narco-terrorist" groups, helped
legitimize the rebels and moved the United States dangerously closer
to getting involved in Colombia's internal guerrilla war,
congressional critics say.

"By involving the United States so directly in the peace process, the
administration erased the line in the sand it had long sought to draw
between counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency," Rep. Benjamin
Gilman, chairman of the House Committee on International Relations,
said Wednesday. "The administration has stepped right into the middle
of Colombia's war."

Peter Romero, head of the State Department's office of hemispheric
affairs, said in a telephone interview that Chicola participated in
the talks "at the request of the Colombian government" and as a way to
show U.S. support for Pastrana's peace initiative.

Pastrana's "Plan Colombia" to end a decades-old guerrilla war that has
left more than 35,000 civilian victims in the past 10 years envisions
a $3.6 billion program to build schools and hospitals, and fund
crop-substitution programs in guerrilla-dominated coca and marijuana
growing regions. A sizable part of that money would have to come from
the United States -- and would have to be approved by the U.S. Congress.

CUBA: What's behind the recent U.S. measures? To the readers who have
asked what led the Clinton administration to ease travel and trade
restrictions on Cuba this week, let me add one more explanation to
those offered by Cuba pundits in recent days -- preventive diplomacy.

The latest U.S. measures may be a preemptive strike by the Clinton
administration to deflate an expected barrage of anti-U.S. propaganda
in coming months, when Cuban President Fidel Castro will enjoy larger
than usual media exposure.

Castro is expected to get a hero's welcome at the Feb. 2 inauguration
of President-elect Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He will also be the host
of Spanish King Juan Carlos during the latter's visit to Cuba, and may
steal the show at the first European-Latin American summit, to be held
in Rio de Janeiro in July, and -- most of all -- during the
Ibero-American Summit to take place late this year in Cuba with the
attendance of 21 heads of state.

So 1999 looks like a Castro propaganda feast, and U.S. officials may
be trying to keep gringo-bashing to a minimum. Asked about it, a U.S.
official involved in the adoption of the new measures said propaganda
considerations played "a secondary" role. "The first consideration was
to further encourage independent activities in Cuba," the official
said.