Brutal Killing Halts Colombia Peace Talks

President Andres Pastrana’s tolerance for negotiating with Marxist guerrillas despite their escalating brutality against civilians appeared to be nearing its limits Tuesday as he suspended the next round of peace talks following the savage slaying of an extortion victim.

Pastrana angrily announced the suspension after a 53-year-old dairy farmer and mother was decapitated Monday by a bomb that was clamped around her neck in a bungled attempt to wrest $7,500 from her family.

“Violent men have placed a necklace of dynamite--around the hope of all Colombians,” he said in a speech that was his strongest statement yet about the insurgents who have been fighting the government for 36 years. “There are not words to repudiate this act that would shame animals.”

Pastrana was elected two years ago on a peace platform and has aggressively pursued negotiations with the guerrillas.

Shortly after Pastrana spoke, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, this nation’s oldest and largest guerrilla group, denied that his organization was responsible for the death of Elvia Cortes and condemned the killing in a radio interview.

However, the three masked men who broke into her farmhouse in Boyaca province Monday and clamped the explosives around her neck claimed to be members of the FARC, according to army Gen. Fabio Bedoya. The men told Cortes that the bomb was timed to explode at 3 p.m. unless her family met their extortion demands.

Bedoya’s soldiers tried for nearly nine hours to defuse the bomb before it exploded about 1 p.m. It was unclear what triggered the blast.

Bomb disposal expert Jairo Lopez lost both hands in the explosion and bled to death in a helicopter as he was being taken to a hospital. Four other soldiers were injured.

“We are at the brink of a civil war,” warned Camilo Gonzalez Pozo, director of the Institute for the Study of Development and Peace, a civic group that closely monitors the peace talks. “This diabolical invention symbolizes to citizens that everyone is vulnerable. There is general terror.”

That atmosphere is especially significant, he said, at a time when the U.S. Senate is considering an anti-narcotics aid package that includes $1.3 billion for Colombia, for the most part to provide military hardware. “All of the armed groups are preparing for war at the end of the year,” he said.

Colombian rebels finance their guerrilla war with extortion, kidnapping and a cut of the profits from drug crops grown in areas under their control. Although organized crime is also rampant, reportedly accounting for one-third to half of the estimated 2,900 abductions last year, suspicion toward the FARC was bolstered by the insurgents’ announcement last month of a stepped-up campaign to collect “taxes” from middle-class and wealthy Colombians.

The previous government peace negotiator was replaced after that rebel announcement.

Cortes’ slaying is the latest in a series of attacks on civilians that appears to be turning public opinion against the rebels. In a poll published Sunday in the respected El Tiempo newspaper, 43% of the 1,000 people surveyed said they would prefer a president who was more aggressive militarily and less of a negotiator; 18% said they would prefer a military government.

To get peace talks started after he assumed office in August 1998, Pastrana took the unprecedented step of ordering the army out of a five-county area in the southeast, which the FARC has occupied. A smaller area, in the northeast, is being set aside for the National Liberation Army, which is about one-third the size of the FARC.

Talks with the FARC have shown slow progress on matters such as setting an agenda for negotiations but have brought few practical improvements in the lives of Colombians besieged by the guerrilla war, the president acknowledged Tuesday in his speech.

Although he is suspending talks set for May 29, Pastrana said he will propose that negotiators begin immediate discussions on a cease-fire and an end to extortion and kidnapping.

“My government is still firmly committed to peace,” Pastrana said. “But not peace at any price.”

Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church have threatened to withdraw from the talks if the issues of a cease-fire and respect for the rights of civilians are not taken up immediately.

Last year, 80% of the people killed in actions related to the war were not involved with any armed groups, said Regulo Madero, director of the Regional Corporation for the Defense of Human Rights, a civic group. “The war is being won by paramilitaries, the guerrillas and the armed forces,” he said, “but civilians are losing, and we need to look for a way out.”

An estimated 35,000 people have been killed in the past 10 years.

Human rights groups blame most of those slayings on right-wing private armies that accused the victims of supporting the rebels. However, insurgents were implicated in one-fourth of those killings last year, according to a study released in March by the Colombian National Defense Ministry.

In addition, rebels now routinely set up roadblocks and abduct drivers and passengers for ransoms.

However, rebel leader Ivan Rios told the Colombian radio station Capital that it is not a FARC practice “to put a bomb on a person who refuses to pay money.” He blamed Cortes’ killing on enemies of the peace process.

“I, along with the leadership of the FARC, condemn this murder,” he said.

That is significant, said Gonzalez Pozo of the civic group, because it has the effect of an order on all FARC fronts not to commit such killings. “To do otherwise would precipitate terror that the country could not tolerate,” he said.

He also noted that the talks that have been suspended are crucial to achieving international support for Pastrana’s efforts to achieve peace and combat narcotics. Organizers had invited delegates from the U.S. and Europe to the meeting in the FARC-controlled zone to discuss ways to protect the environment and to cut back on drug crops.

In addition to the $1.3 billion in aid requested from the United States, Colombia has asked for $1 billion in development assistance from Europe. About 200 U.S. Defense Department employees are in Colombia helping with the anti-narcotics effort.

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Times staff writer Darling reported from San Salvador and Morris from Bogota.