COLOMBIA'S PEACE PROCESS

Not Looking Good

BOGOTA

The FARC carries on regardless

AT FIRST, Colombians were hugely relieved. On January 20th President Andres
Pastrana decided, after some last-minute brinkmanship, to renew the decrees
which conceded to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) a huge
demilitarised enclave of 42,000 square kilometres in the south of the
country. The agreement with the country's largest guerrilla group also set
a tight agenda for reaching a ceasefire by April. After three years of
drifting talks and continuing violence, respite seemed in sight.

No longer. Although ceasefire talks are continuing in the FARC's enclave,
the 18,000-strong guerrilla force has stepped up its campaign across the
rest of the country. More than 40 soldiers, police and civilians have been
killed in the past two weeks, including five in a bomb explosion in Bogota
on January 25th. On February 6th, a huge car bomb was defused in Medellin.
Many recent attacks have been in urban areas, raising fears that the rebels
are taking their war to the cities, where three-quarters of Colombians
live. The guerrillas have also attacked power lines, bringing down more
than 50 pylons and causing blackouts in three regions.

Mr Pastrana wants American military aid, which is currently dedicated to
arming and training Colombian anti-drugs forces, to be used also to protect
such things as oil pipelines. Attacks by a smaller guerrilla group, the
National Liberation Army (ELN), on the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline
prevented Occidental Petroleum from pumping over 20m barrels last year,
more than half its capacity. The Colombian government has already received
$1.3 billion from the United States over the past two years for anti-drugs
operations. Another $625m should be forthcoming unless Colin Powell,
America's secretary of state, decides within the next month to suspend
assistance on human-rights grounds. On February 5th Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International called on him to do just that, claiming that
Colombia's armed forces were continuing to collaborate with the country's
brutal right-wing paramilitary groups. But without American aid, both the
guerrillas and the paramilitaries may well get stronger. On February 6th,
the FARC demanded an end to Plan Colombia, the American-backed anti-drugs
offensive, and the expulsion of all foreign military advisers.

Meanwhile, after a five-month suspension, the government resumed peace
talks last week in Cuba with the ELN. Analysts say this group, which has no
more than 5,000 fighters, represents Mr Pastrana's only real hope of
striking a peace deal before he leaves office. But three days of talks
produced no more than a well-meaning but woolly commitment to carry on.

Ordinary Colombians are fed up with all this. In May, they must elect a new
president. The latest polls give Alvaro Uribe Velez, the most belligerent
critic of the peace process among the seven presidential candidates, a
nine-point lead over Horacio Serpa, the more dovish leader of the
opposition Liberal Party. A former governor of the department of Antioquia,
Colombia's economic powerhouse, he is accused by some of being too close to
the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), the paramilitary umbrella
group responsible for most human-rights abuses, though he denies this. But
in a country crying out for order, Mr Uribe has struck a chord with voters.
He has promised that, unless hostilities end completely, the armed forces
will retake the FARC's enclave on the day he becomes president.

Whether his popularity lasts will depend largely on the FARC. James
LeMoyne, the former journalist who, as the UN's representative for
Colombia, was credited with reviving the peace talks last month, thinks
that the FARC's current offensive is mostly a short-lived show of strength
after their agreement to ceasefire talks. If this is so, Mr Uribe's chances
of winning the presidency may subside as the violence does. But if the
FARC's offensive endures, the volatile loyalties of the Colombian
electorate may switch definitively to the hawk rather than the doves.