Colombia, Rebels Set New Talks

The government and rebel leaders reached a last-minute accord Monday to restart peace talks, pulling Colombia back from the brink of a full-blown war.

A group of 10 ambassadors persuaded the two sides to end their standoff only hours before a deadline for troops to retake a demilitarized zone that the government ceded to the country’s largest rebel army--the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC--three years ago for peace negotiations.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana maintained a hard line toward the guerrillas, however, insisting that they take explicit steps toward peace.

“The process is only justifiable if it produces concrete results,” Pastrana said in a nationally televised address. “Colombians are not going to recover their faith in the FARC’s word and willingness for peace with today’s declarations.”

Pastrana said that talks will begin again immediately in an effort to reach a precise timetable for discussing such controversial measures as a cessation of hostilities, a ban on kidnappings and an end to attacks against the country’s infrastructure.

But he warned that he might not extend the life of the zone created for the peace talks after Jan. 20, a previously scheduled deadline.

There is “less than a week to decide whether we prolong the zone. We haven’t arrived at that end,” Pastrana said. “It’s the moment to advance with concrete acts of peace.”

Still, the diplomats from 10 so-called facilitator countries said they were relieved to have at least put the negotiations back on track and stopped the country from plunging into a bloody new chapter of its civil war.

“The clock has stopped,” said Daniel Parfait, the French ambassador who headed the group of diplomats who undertook a last-minute trip to the zone to save the peace process. “We have an agreement between both parties.”

Camilo Gomez, Colombia’s top negotiator, appeared relieved and said the two sides will now get back to trying to end the country’s 38-year-old internal conflict.

He gave no timetable for renewed negotiations, nor did he say when the country could expect to see concrete results, such as a cease-fire.

“We must begin to quickly firm up accords to reduce the conflict,” Gomez said. “It is going to be a lot of work, not only for the negotiating table but for the whole country.”

Despite the new start, the two sides were no closer to a final peace agreement. Monday’s achievement guaranteed only the continuation of roller-coaster negotiations that have frequently broken down in the past.

Skepticism remained over whether the two sides would even negotiate in good faith. Many Colombians believe the FARC uses the zone to build up its forces, which now number 17,000. The FARC also has used the zone to hide kidnap victims, provide military training and transport, and protect cocaine shipments.

Critics of the peace process say the Colombian military is also biding its time, growing stronger as it receives money from a $1.3-billion U.S. aid package intended to improve its capability to fight narcotics trafficking.

One diplomat present at the talks called the return to the peace process a “face-saving” measure and warned of future troubles.

“The government doesn’t trust the FARC, and the FARC don’t trust the government,” the diplomat said. “‘It’s unclear what the goals of the negotiations are.”

Another diplomat credited the emergency talks with improving the chances of international participation in the peace negotiations, a step that both the FARC and the government have long resisted. But he too expressed skepticism about the future of the negotiations.

“We’ve overcome a big hurdle, but it’s only for today. Tomorrow, they have to show they can negotiate,” said a diplomat who participated in the talks.

But U.N. special envoy James LeMoyne said he was hopeful that the peace process would now advance. The agreement reached Monday also provides for the presence at future negotiations of LeMoyne and two of the 10 ambassadors.

Colombians reacted with relief and joy as news spread that the country had averted a new wave of violence in a conflict that already costs thousands of lives each year.

Much of the country had seemed to throw its weight behind the last, desperate effort to resuscitate the talks, no matter how far apart the sides. From the soaring high-rises in the capital, Bogota, to corrugated tin shacks in dusty frontier towns, Colombians were riveted to television sets to find out whether the nation would return to all-out warfare.

Talk shows were filled with pleas for peace. Senators and union leaders urged reconciliation. Even Carlos Castano, the head of one of the nation’s violent right-wing paramilitary groups, asked for the rebels to return to negotiations, promising that his group would give up arms if the FARC would also.

A crowd of more than 200 men, women and children who had gathered under a hot sun to watch the negotiations let out loud cheers as Parfait read the announcement that talks would continue.

The crowd had spent most of the day pressed against a chain-link fence just 30 feet away from the open-air negotiating table, providing the diplomats and guerrillas with a palpable reminder of what was at stake.

“We just want peace,” said Noemi Sanchez, a 19-year-old from a nearby town.

Besides the 10 ambassadors, the final push to save the talks included special envoys from the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church, who crowded around white plastic tables under a palm-thatched cabana to coax rebel leaders back to the table.

The impasse began when Pastrana imposed a series of new security restrictions after he accused rebels of abusing the zone by using it as a haven to hold kidnap victims and conduct military training.

The rebels objected that their safety was threatened by the new measures, which included air force surveillance, restrictions on foreign visitors and an increased military presence around the zone, a mostly unpopulated region twice the size of New Jersey.

Pastrana insisted that the measures were nonnegotiable, and the rebels walked out of talks in October. Last week, Pastrana gave the rebels 48 hours to leave the zone but then agreed to a U.N. request for final talks.

LeMoyne struggled alone for three days to make headway. He said that long-standing mistrust between the FARC and the government made reaching an agreement difficult.

At one point, after Pastrana had rejected a 14-point proposal from the FARC and again given the rebels 48 hours to leave the zone, the guerrillas began making plans for war, according to one source close to the negotiations.

One commander gave orders to 700 men to prepare for battle. At another time, commanders began pulling out maps and planning how best to combat the army, the source said.

“They went from being negotiators to being what they are, rebel commanders. They literally took off for the hills,” the source said.

The key sticking point in the talks involved Pastrana’s new controls. After nearly 40 years of fighting in almost total isolation--the FARC has few contacts with other revolutionary groups--the rebels simply did not believe that Pastrana would refrain from attacking them.

They worried that the air force planes flying above were actually targeting them for attack.

“It almost broke and it didn’t, and that’s why it worked,” said one diplomat close to the talks.

At last, LeMoyne convinced FARC leaders to accept the intervention of the 10 ambassadors, which convinced the FARC to give in and agree that its safety was guaranteed. Pledges from the Catholic Church and the United Nations that the government would respect the zone also helped.

Still, neither LeMoyne nor the diplomats were sure that their presence had rescued the peace process until only five hours before the 9:30 p.m. deadline Monday.

“They looked into the abyss, and they stepped back,” LeMoyne said.

The FARC agreed to immediately begin work on a peace agenda that includes a cessation of hostilities and an end to kidnapping. It did not, however, say when or even if it would implement those measures, something that Pastrana had seemed to insist on in his earlier remarks.

But Gomez insisted that the new talks will lead to concrete acts.

“It’s an important step,” he said. “‘We are satisfied.”

The two sides had been closer to renewed hostilities than at any time in the last three years of talks. On Monday, tanks had arrived just 30 miles south of the zone, and more than 5,000 soldiers were preparing to invade.

Pvt. Luis Gordillo was sitting with his pit bull and tank crew on the side of a two-lane blacktop road, where they were awaiting a final order to be the first soldiers to enter the zone. He was calm, saying he was prepared for anything.

“If they tell us to go in, we’ll go in with optimism. And if they tell us to go back, we’ll go back the same way,” he said.

Late Monday, there was a grim reminder of the difficulties ahead. FARC guerrillas reportedly attacked and killed nine police officers in a small town in a state bordering Ecuador.