By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 27, 2001; Page A20
Colombian President Andres Pastrana urged the Bush administration yesterday to reverse U.S. policy and participate in face-to-face meetings with his country's largest guerrilla group, saying Washington ought to "directly exchange views" with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The guerrilla organization, known by the Spanish initials FARC, last Friday invited both the United States and Cuba to join international observers monitoring its peace talks with the government. The observers, including European and Latin American governments, are to attend a March 8 negotiating session in a rebel-held enclave.
"I think it's important for the United States to be there," Pastrana told reporters on the third day of his four-day visit here.
A State Department official politely declined the offer. "We support and welcome greater international involvement in the process," the official said. "But we ourselves cannot participate" until the FARC resolves a controversy that broke off an incipient U.S. dialogue with the guerrillas two years ago.
The dialogue began in late 1998 and ended in March 1999, after FARC soldiers killed three American humanitarian workers. Although the FARC acknowledged responsibility for what it called a "mistake of war," and announced that it would punish several low-level guerrillas, the United States said there would be no more talks until those responsible for ordering and committing the killings are turned in.
Cuba has made no public response to the FARC invitation, although a Cuban diplomat here said yesterday that his government "has said since the very beginning that we're in favor of the peace process, and we will do whatever we can to move it forward."
The United States also has accused the FARC of direct involvement in Colombian drug exports, which provide 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in this country. But Pastrana said that while the guerrillas tax drug traffickers in areas they control, "we don't have evidence, nor does the United States or anyone else, of them being a cartel." If he ever learned the FARC was directly involved in drug trafficking, Pastrana said, "I will never sit at the peace table with them."
Pastrana, who is to see President Bush today, made what a Pentagon official described as a courtesy call on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in which he expressed appreciation for U.S. military aid. He also held separate meetings with Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans to discuss hoped-for U.S. trade preferences.
Meanwhile, the State Department yesterday reported that the Colombian government's human rights record "remained poor" and that illegal right-wing paramilitary forces still "find a ready support base within the military and police."
The assessment, part of the department's annual worldwide human rights report, noted "some improvements in the legal framework and in institutional mechanisms" for bringing rights abusers to justice. The principal author of the report also credited Pastrana with serious efforts to reverse "traditions that will take years, if not decades, to overcome."
Pastrana told reporters he thought the report was fair.