Colombia's rebels hold talks while tanks wait

Marxist Guerrillas in Colombia will enter talks to end their 38-year uprising with heightened urgency, after a United Nations envoy and 10 foreign ambassadors helped to patch up a rupture in the three-year peace process hours before government tanks were to roll into the rebel stronghold.

But President Andres Pastrana warned in a national telecast that he would suspend demilitarisation of the 16,000sq-mile zone set aside for peace talks by Sunday unless substantial progress was made towards a ceasefire. Nearly 12,000 troops and tanks have been poised on the periphery of the zone since talks broke down last week, and all-out civil war looked imminent.

Mr Pastrana, elected in 1998 on a peace ticket, has earned widespread public contempt for being soft on the 17,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), South America's largest guerrilla army, and repeatedly capitulating to its demands.

Last week's hardline tactics took many by surprise. He met General Fernando Tapias, his military commander-in-chief, and Anne Patterson, the US ambassador, before his latest ultimatum. "The best way to end this conflict is through dialogue," he said later. His term ends in August, and many feared Farc rebels would disrupt new elections in a backlash against the closure of their stronghold. At least 3,500 lives are lost in the conflict every year, with almost the same numbers of kidnaps for ransom. In the past decade alone, 40,000 have died.

Analysts believe Mr Pastrana is emboldened by Washington's new war on terrorism. Already, America provides Colombia with $1.3bn (£900bn) of military hardware, and special forces, based in the oil-rich department of Putumayo, have trained three Colombian battalions to fight drug traffickers. But reports from Washington indicate that America is now considering extending the assistance to help counter- insurgency efforts.

The left-wing Farc, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defence Forces (AUC), are blacklisted as terrorist organisations with global reach. Officials hinted that some US presidential advisers want to train a new rapid reaction force to quash guerrilla assaults on vulnerable oil pipelines used by American companies, such as Occidental. Attacks on electrical pylons and other infrastructure components are common, because Farc has continued its attacks outside the zone.

Although Congress has repeatedly cautioned that American troops must avoid direct combat in a jungle war that has all the drawbacks of Vietnam, heightened security concerns in the region since September's terrorist attacks on the World Trade centre and the Pentagon make intelligence-sharing a new priority.

Pentagon hawks say the line between fighting the narcotics trade and the Colombian rebels who protect and profit from the drug barons, the source for most American cocaine and heroin, is increasingly arbitrary. President George Bush's $625m Andean regional aid package, approved last month, also restricts the use of new attack helicopters, US-trained forces and most intelligence-gathering to narcotics interdiction. Colombian soldiers must be vetted in case of a history of human rights abuse or links with paramilitary death squads before American advisers will train them.

Farc has used the contro- versial demilitarised zone, known as Farclandia, for training guerrillas and holding hostages and other prisoners rather than as a venue for peace talks. James LeMoyne, the United Nations envoy, pledged to stay in the area and help to safeguard the lives of 100,000 civilians who live in the cattle towns and jungle hamlets.