A Last-Ditch Effort at Peace

As Colombia’s armed forces stepped up preparations Thursday to invade a demilitarized zone ceded to leftist rebels, President Andres Pastrana granted a United Nations request to make a last-ditch effort to resuscitate the nation’s collapsed peace process.

Throughout the day, the army and air force moved men and equipment toward the Switzerland-sized zone, which has hosted peace talks for the last three years between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Pastrana broke off talks Wednesday, giving the rebels 48 hours to leave the zone. But late Thursday, Pastrana said he was granting 48 hours more for the United Nations and international diplomats to try to reach a breakthrough with the FARC. If no results followed, he said, the guerrillas must leave the zone by Monday night.

“The FARC have the responsibility to decide whether or not the peace process continues,” Pastrana said in a nationally televised address.

But if hopes for peace lay with the FARC, they appeared misplaced. Speaking shortly before Pastrana did, the rebels charged that the government had abandoned talks, and the group offered no new concessions to restart negotiations.

Instead, the rebels insisted that Pastrana holds the key to resurrecting the process. They did, however, say they were willing to meet with U.N. and European officials who have been monitoring the peace process.

“Who must return to the table is the government, not the FARC, since the FARC hasn’t left the table,” rebel spokesman Raul Reyes said. “On the contrary, we have presented a series of proposals directed at unsticking the peace process.”

Pastrana’s extension came at the request of the U.N.’s newly appointed peace envoy to Colombia, James LeMoyne, who said peace negotiators needed more time to prevent a new surge of violence in the country’s 4-decade-old civil war.

LeMoyne, a veteran of negotiations that ended the conflicts in Central America during the 1990s, said he was discussing scenarios that would allow talks to continue, but he declined to elaborate.

“I am absolutely convinced that there are forms to solve this current crisis,” LeMoyne said.

Still, it was a measure of the gravity of the crisis that the United Nations didn’t immediately step in to offer its services as a third-party mediator. One top U.N. official said the two sides are too far apart.

“I don’t think we’re pushing very hard” to act as a mediator, the official said. “The time just isn’t ripe.”

Peace talks broke down over new restrictions that Pastrana imposed in October after he accused the rebels of using the zone as a haven for kidnapping and rebel training. Pastrana ordered military overflights of the area and restricted the entry of foreigners.

The rebels responded by insisting that the new restrictions were a threat to their security and refused to negotiate further.

FARC officials pledged to remain in the zone, even if Pastrana removed its status as a demilitarized area.

“We have been fighting here for more than 30 years. We will stay here, zone or not,” Carlos Antonio Lozada, a FARC negotiator, said Thursday in a telephone interview.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the U.S. backs Pastrana’s actions, although he made no mention of lending equipment or troops to support efforts to retake the zone by force.

The U.S. already is giving $1.3 billion in anti-narcotics aid to Colombia as part of a plan to halve cocaine production. The U.S. recently provided the Colombian army with 14 Black Hawk helicopters and has trained three elite army battalions, but neither the troops nor the aircraft are involved in attack plans, according to Colombian army officials.

“I hope we do not find an upsurge in violence, and I hope that there may still be found a way to move forward in whatever way President Pastrana decides,” Powell said.

Peace and church groups were struggling to find that way. They met with U.N. officials early Thursday to ask for mediation but were told that the FARC and the government had to make a formal petition. Both sides have resisted outside intervention in the past.

Meanwhile, concern grew about the fate of those living in the five villages in the zone. Right-wing paramilitary groups have recently made incursions into surrounding areas, and human rights groups are concerned that the violent groups, responsible for the majority of massacres in Colombia, will target civilians as guerrilla sympathizers.

There were also reports that guerrillas were swapping their camouflage for civilian clothes, making civilian deaths even more likely in a clash between the army and the FARC.

Although the peace process has frequently been on the verge of failure, longtime observers were pessimistic about the chances of continuing without third-party intervention.