COLOMBIA ATTACKS REBEL ZONE AS LEADER'S PATIENCE SNAPS

BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 21 -- Colombian Air Force planes bombed rebel camps
and clandestine airstrips today as thousands of troops prepared to retake a
huge rebel-held zone in an offensive that may well mark the end of a
tortuous three-year peace effort.

The operation began just hours after President Andres Pastrana, in an
emotional nationwide address on Wednesday night, angrily broke off talks
while accusing the rebels of hijacking a domestic airliner in order to
kidnap a senior senator who was on board. The president said the Marxist
guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was guilty of
"extreme wickedness and cruelty," demonstrating that his legendary patience
with the rebels had been spent.

Shortly after midnight, the government said, aircraft began bombing rebel
camps, storage facilities, cocaine-processing laboratories and hidden
airstrips inside a swath of jungle that Mr. Pastrana ceded in 1998 as a
safe haven for peace talks.

The rebels abandoned the five towns in the demilitaried zone, melting into
the thick jungles of a sparsely populated region known as El Caguan.

But through its de facto news agency in Europe, the New Colombia News
Agency, the rebel group blamed Mr. Pastrana and "the intolerance of the
oligarchy" for the rupture in the talks. The group, however, has not denied
responsibility for the hijacking of an Aires airlines flight on Wednesday
morning. Four armed rebels, the government said, took over the plane in
midflight and forced it to land on a remote road. Armed men in
four-wheel-drive vehicles then whisked Senator Jorge Eduardo Gechem Turbay
off toward the rebel zone.

As Colombians braced for an escalation of violence in the country's 38-
year-old war, many said they supported Mr. Pastrana.

"It is impossible to keep negotiating with a group that says it is fighting
for the people but the only thing they do is hurt civilians," said Carolina
Cuatros, 35, a lawyer's assistant.

Most Colombians had overwhelmingly supported peace negotiations in the
past, voting Mr. Pastrana into office in 1998 after he promised to bring
peace. But polls have shown that Colombians have become increasingly
repulsed by the guerrilla group's tactics: attacks on villages, the use of
car bombs and a reliance on kidnappings for financing.

Indeed, Colombian society in the last three years has shifted sharply to
the right.

In a recent poll, 53 percent of respondents said they would vote for a
hard-line candidate for president in May's general election, Alvaro Uribe.
Mr. Uribe, a former governor and mayor of Medellin, has harshly criticized
the rebel zone and promised that under his leadership the army would pursue
the rebels relentlessly unless guerrilla commanders agreed to an immediate
end to all hostilities.

"Uribe is no longer seen as a fringe candidate," said Russell Crandall, a
professor at Davidson College in North Carolina who recently completed a
book about American policy toward Colombia. "Rather, his tough rhetoric of
a year ago is now standard copy for just about all of the candidates."

Today, speaking with a small group of foreign reporters, Mr. Pastrana, who
cannot run for re-election, left open the possibility of resuming
negotiations. But with the demilitarized zone expected to be in government
hands soon, any talks would have to be held in a third country, something
the rebels have long rejected.

"I still believe in a political solution," the president said. "We are open
to continue the process when the FARC have made the decision to make
peace," he added, referring to the rebels by their Spanish acronym.

Today, officials from the United Nations to the European Commission
condemned the rebel group and expressed support for Mr. Pastrana, though
they also stressed that Colombia's war would be resolved only through a
peaceful settlement.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan said, in a statement
read by his spokesman, that the guerrilla organization's activities were
"clear violations" of human rights laws and "have undermined the peace talks."

In Brussels, the European Commission said it "understands the decision
taken by President Pastrana." To be sure, the rupture in the talks was a
blow to European and Latin American countries, whose diplomats helped
resolve a serious crisis just last month that nearly derailed negotiations.

"We have to analyze this, whether the FARC has deliberately broken off,"
said a Western diplomat involved in the negotiations. "Our credibility is
on the line with this as well, and a lot of people have accused us of
saving a process that wasn't worth saving."

In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the
United States supported Mr. Pastrana's government. The United States has
already provided hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to
Colombia, with the stipulation that it be used only in counter- drug
operations.

The Bush administration, however, is requesting Congressional approval of
$98 million to pay for training and helicopters for Colombian troops to
guard an oil pipeline, a sharp departure from past policy. Increasingly,
lawmakers on Capitol Hill, as well as Pentagon policy-makers, are also
seeking Congressional approval so American equipment can be used for
counterinsurgency operations.

"There has no doubt been a shift in thinking in Washington," said Michael
Shifter, who follows Colombia for the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy
analysis group in Washington. "Congress will be favorably disposed to help
Colombia, but will want to know how the Bush administration plans to avoid
going down a slippery slope."

In Colombia, high-level military officials said they were prepared to
retake the demilitarized zone, which is about twice the size of El
Salvador. "We will surely suffer casualties, but we have a moral obligation
to win this war," Gen. Euclides Sanchez, the army's second in command, told
Colombian radio.

Colombia's 125,000-man army has been restructured in recent years. Training
has been improved and 30,000 enlistees have been added since 1998 to
replace conscripts. The purchase of American transport helicopters has also
vastly improved mobility, which is crucial in a large, rugged country where
battlefields are constantly shifting.

But the military still faces what most analysts agree is the richest and
most powerful rebel group in Latin American history, a force of at least
17,000 well-armed fighters dispersed across virtually every province in the
country.

"To say that the guerrillas will be defeated is a little optimistic."said
Fernando Giraldo, a political scientist at Javeriana University in Bogota
who studies the conflict.

The latest developments come five weeks after the peace process in Colombia
was brought back from the brink of collapse.

Mr. Pastrana broke off talks on Jan. 9 after accusing the rebels of
intransigence. With soldiers positioned just outside the zone, guerrilla
commanders at the last minute agreed to embark on the cease-fire talks that
Mr. Pastrana had long sought.

But in the last 30 days, the president charged, the rebels have set off
four car bombs, killed 20 civilians and blown up 30 power pylons.

"The mask is off and the guerrillas have shown their true face, the face of
violence without reason, before the world," Mr. Pastrana said in Wednesday
night's address.