COLOMBIA TO SEEK CUBAN HELP IN PEACE PROCESS

BOGOTA, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Colombian President Andres Pastrana said on
Monday that he believed Cuba could play a ``very important'' part in
fledgling efforts to end Colombia's long-running guerrilla war.

Pastrana, who was elected Aug. 7, spoke as he prepared to leave for the
Non-Aligned Movement summit in Durban, South Africa, where he said he would
hold talks with Cuban President Fidel Castro among other world leaders.

``It will be our first direct talks,'' he said of the planned meeting with
Castro, which is set for Wednesday. ``And I think the part that Cuba can
play in the country's peace process is very important.''

In November of last year, during an Ibero-American summit in Venezuela,
Castro said: ``If it were in my hands to do something for peace, I would do
it as a basic duty.''

Those comments came in response to to then-president Ernesto Samper's
request that Castro use his influence to persuade Colombia's 20,000 Marxist
rebels to negotiate to end their three-decade uprising.

Samper's peace overtures were shunned by the country's leading rebel
groups, which branded him an illegitimate'' head of state because of
charges his bankrolled his election with drug money.

Pastrana made a pledge to negotiate an end to Colombia's war one of the top
issues of his campaign. And he has promised to demilitarize a vast swath of
eastern and southern Colombia by early November to set the stage for the
country's first peace talks in six years.

Pastrana stopped short of saying whether he would seek Castro's direct
mediation in peace talks, but the Cuban leader is believed to wield
considerable influence over the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) and Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN).

The FARC and ELN are Latin America's largest and oldest rebel groups.
Castro, who once supported both groups, has gone on record as saying
history has closed the book on the days when leftist insurgencies could
seize power through armed struggle.

Pastrana, who will hand over the rotating chairmanship of the Non-Aligned
Movement to South African President Nelson Mandela at the meeting in
Durban, said he would meet privately with 18 heads of state and government
on the sidelines of the summit.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson