COLOMBIA: DRUG WAR FOR PEACE BUT THERE IS NO PEACE

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Andres Pastrana said Tuesday that ending the
civil war that has ravaged his country for nearly 40 years depends on the
rebels' willingness to help stamp out drug trafficking in areas under their
control.

Pastrana's assessment came as he prepares to open talks with the leftist
rebels. The United States has strengthened his position by offering
substantial help in increasing military and police power.

Pastrana, who took office five months ago, is slated to meet leaders of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's most powerful
insurgency, on Thursday in the remote jungle town of San Vicente del Caguan.
The government evacuated security forces from an area as big as Switzerland
to allow the talks to take place, as the rebels demanded.

In an interview at the Narino Presidential Palace Tuesday, the 43-year-old
president noted that American aid has so far gone largely toward supporting
police efforts to halt drug trafficking, mostly through fumigation. Pushed
by Conservative Republicans in Congress, the United States more than tripled
aid to Colombia recently, to $289 million this year from $88.6 million last
year.

This week, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin announced that a
mid-level State Department official, Philip Chicola, had secretly met with
FARC leaders in Costa Rica to discuss the rebels' recent declarations of
willingness to eliminate drug crops in areas they control. Chicola also
discussed the rebels' policy on kidnapping foreigners and the fate of three
missing missionaries whom they are accused of having kidnapped five years
ago.

"The first enemy of peace is narco-trafficking," Pastrana said Tuesday. "If
the FARC takes the decision to eradicate drug crops, they'll do it. Because
they definitively have the influence to carry it out."

Pastrana reiterated earlier criticism of American policy as relying almost
exclusively on police tactics to fight drug dealing, and noted that some in
the U.S. Congress had an interest in promoting war in Colombia. Under the
current budget passed by Congress, Washington plans to spend $10 million on
crop substitution in drug-producing regions, but $9 million of the money
will go to Peru and Bolivia.

"In the U.S. Congress, there are those who believe that only through
repressive, policing measures can you put an end to this business," Pastrana
said. "I maintain that for the first time ever, there's a different window
of opportunity. And it's that the guerrilla group is saying it would agree
to eradicate drug crops."

"It's the first opportunity we have to consider our policy of fighting drug
trafficking in a different way," Pastrana said. "Why not look at it."

The meeting is unfolding against a backdrop of intensifying violence in a
war that has torn this country apart for decades. Last week, the FARC took
advantage of a temporary cease-fire declared by a right-wing paramilitary
leader, Carlos Castano, to launch an all-out attack on his home base in the
Nudo de Paramillo region.

At least 30 people were killed, including a 3-week-old infant and a
3-year-old child. Some victims died after being dismembered, and were
castrated afterward. Others were beheaded. Only 11 of the dead were
identified.

For several days, the fate of Castano remained uncertain, with the rebels
claiming to have killed him. On Sunday, however, Castano contacted a radio
station in Medellin to say he was alive.

With the paramilitary cease-fire ending Wednesday, Pastrana appeared most
eager to dampen expectations of instant progress in ending the conflict. He
stressed that the talks beginning Thursday were not peace negotiations, but
merely an effort to hammer out the logistics of eventual peace talks, and to
gauge the willingness of the rebels to negotiate an end to the war that has
claimed 35,000 lives in the last decade and made more than a million
Colombians refugees in their own country.

"On Thursday, we're not going to negotiate," Pastrana said. Earlier this
week, he named four "spokesmen" for peace, including Nicanor Restrepo, an
industrialist, Maria Emma Mejia, the former foreign minister under President
Ernesto Samper, who will represent the opposition; Fabio Valencia, the
president of Congress, and Rodolfo Espinosa, governor of Atlantico province.
"We're going to install the table for a dialogue, to see if there's an
interest in getting to the negotiating table," Pastrana said.

So far, the rebels have not pledged to lay down their arms as part of any
agreement. An analysis by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency last year
predicted the rebels could win control of the Bogota government within five
years.

The questions that will be discussed over the next month in San Vicente del
Caguan will largely involve logistics, including where and when negotiations
will be held, and what role, if any, other countries should play in
mediating or monitoring any agreements.

Pastrana said that the single most important gauge for the future of talks
would be whether or not a proposed agenda for negotiations emerges over the
next month. Government security forces are now scheduled to retake the
temporarily demilitarized zone in southeastern Colombia on Feb. 7, but
Pastrana did not rule out extending the evacuation.

He said that he believed the rebels were sincere in their desire to
negotiate peace in exchange for participation in the country's political
life, and added that he did not believe they were seeking control of
territory. Pastrana noted that an earlier rebel effort to create a political
party called the Patriotic Union fell apart with the steady, unexplained
extermination of some 5,000 of its members over the last 12 years.

"The great problem that the FARC has had is that the state never gave the
guarantees that would allow them to pursue political activities," the
president said. Asked what would happen if parties allied to the rebels won
control of 40 percent of the country's municipalities, Pastrana said, "To
me, that's fine. It's democracy."

It was not clear Tuesday whether the top rebel leader, Manuel Marulanda,
would come out of hiding to meet the president, whom he first met shortly
before Pastrana's inauguration on Aug. 7. Rebel representatives in San
Vicente del Caguan said that the preparations so far appeared to center
largely around ceremonial, rather than substantive, aspects of the upcoming
meeting.

Fabian Ramirez, leader of insurgent forces in Southern Colombia, complained
that the delegates Pastrana named to lead talks held "no decision-making
power."

"If that's the case, we may send similar delegates," he told the Reuters
news agency in San Vicente del Caguan. "We could all end up around a table
talking and nobody will be able to decide anything."