COLOMBIA'S SEARCH FOR PEACE 'PARALYSED'

At a clandestine field hospital in north Colombia, Fernando, an outlawed
paramilitary fighter, bumps across the rough terrain in a wheelchair. At
28, Fernando is paralysed - shot in the neck during a gun battle with
leftist guerrillas lurking on the border with neighbouring Venezuela.

Paralysis, he says, best describes the latest turn in Colombia's search for
a peaceful end to its decades-long domestic conflict.

"I don't see the war ending. The government doesn't want to assume the
political cost of a real negotiation," says the 10-year veteran of the
United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), the 20,000-strong
counter-subversive organisation.

Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, has used military force to pursue
rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc. With the
AUC, by contrast, he has sought to negotiate.

After a year, however, government-AUC talks are in trouble. Mr Uribe has
recently taken an increasingly inflexible stand against the AUC's
commanders, arguing that they must face prison for past atrocities, and
insisting those wanted abroad will be extradited.

The US, which backs Mr Uribe and supplies his government with military aid,
is seeking the extradition of several AUC commanders on drug trafficking
charges.

"Extradition is not a subject for negotiation," Mr Uribe, who was elected
two years ago and is seeking a constitutional amendment to permit his
re-election in 2006, said last week. "The [AUC] must move forward on
demobilisation," he said. "If not, the government will continue combating
them until they are annihilated."

Paramilitary commanders concede they receive 70 per cent of their funding
from a "tax" on drug crops, but say they are not drug barons.

They also argue that the government has forgotten that the AUC filled an
authoritative vacuum across Colombia that had left civilians to fight
against the leftwing guerrillas themselves.

The state government remains absent in many areas of Colombia, and the
civilian population, rather than fearing the AUC's presence, fears its
departure.

"We feel protected by the AUC. They have integrated with us and organised
health centres and built roads," says Jose Hernandez, a priest in rural
Cordoba, north Colombia.

For such reasons, the AUC says that its demobilisation can only come about
through negotiation.

"We have told the government that the peace process can move ahead only if
it accepts why we exist," Salvatore Mancuso, chief of the AUC high
command's negotiating team, told the Financial Times last week. "We have
every intention of seeking peace, and it's time to negotiate firmly, rather
than impose," he said.

However, the likelihood of a negotiated settlement also seems more distant
today with new questions concerning control of the AUC.

Carlos Castano, who helped found the AUC in the early 1980s, has been
missing since he was involved in a gunfight at a remote ranch on April 16.
He represented the AUC's "moderate" wing and often criticised the
organisation's links with the cocaine trade.

Some say rival factions with closer drug-trade ties killed Mr Castano. AUC
members say Mr Castano had planned to turn himself over to US authorities
in June. Others are uncertain.

Either way, diplomats fear that if Mr Uribe insists on pursuing a tough
stance against the AUC, the peace process will collapse.