By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 7 – Colombian President Andres Pastrana, seeking to preserve a faltering peace process at an important moment for his U.S.-backed
anti-drug strategy, has agreed to maintain for two more months a demilitarized zone in the southern Colombian jungle that has been the venue for meetings with leftist
guerrillas.

Pastrana has been under pressure from opposition leaders and some members of his own party to move the army back into the Switzerland-size area unless the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rejoins the peace talks it left last month. The demilitarized zone, scheduled to expire today, has become a safe
haven, military staging ground and drug-cultivation center for the FARC since a newly elected Pastrana created it two years ago to revive the peace process.

In a brief announcement late Wednesday night in Bogota, the capital, Pastrana's chief peace negotiator, Camilo Gomez, said the area will
remain clear of troops until the end of January in an effort to "defrost" the peace process. Today, Gomez announced an agreement with the FARC, the largest of
Colombia's leftist guerrilla groups, to exchange at least 10 sick prisoners, the first phase of an accord that could eventually affect more than 500 police officers and
soldiers held captive in the demilitarized zone.

The FARC did not agree to other government demands, including a cease-fire for the Christmas season. But the extension, one of the shortest Pastrana has granted,
suggested he may use the next eight weeks to prepare Colombia for a decision to eliminate the demilitarized zone unless the peace talks progress.

"I would not hesitate to make the necessary decisions to ensure Colombia's public order, justice and institutions," Pastrana said today during an army promotion
ceremony in Bogota.

Canceling the demilitarized zone would effectively end the peace process and force the strained Colombian army to retake the area, a feat many military analysts and
diplomats say may be impossible. A FARC leader, Alfonso Cano, warned this week that the zone prevents "total war" in Colombia.

The United States, which has begun sending $1.3 billion in military and social development aid to Colombia, did not publicly press Pastrana on whether to renew the
zone. But senior U.S. officials have raised concerns about its effectiveness. Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering said it is difficult to defend, and drug-policy
director Barry R. McCaffrey said "it has become an armed bastion of the FARC."

But Colombia's European allies and its own peace-advocacy groups have urged Pastrana to keep the area clear, fearing that failing to would worsen the violence.

Despite the FARC's departure from the peace talks, Gomez has continued to meet with guerrilla officials, including a rare visit this month with FARC leader Manuel
Marulanda. Proponents of the demilitarized zone say those talks, which appear to have led to today's prisoner-exchange agreement, would have been impossible
without the safe haven.

"The preservation of the process is very important to many people," said a U.S. diplomat in Bogota. "Without the process, hope has no place to reside. If this
becomes a government seen as committed only to war, then it gives credence to all the accusations the FARC has raised about Plan Colombia."

The renewal comes at an important time for Plan Colombia, the U.S.-backed anti-drug strategy Pastrana is counting on to strengthen his hand at the peace table. The
FARC, with about 17,000 militiamen, derives much of its funding from the drug trade; depriving the FARC of that revenue, Pastrana has said, would force the group
to accept peace.

In the southern province of Putumayo, a FARC stronghold where more than half of Colombia's coca is grown, 700 farmers signed up this month to participate in the
plan's crop-substitution program. Although most of the program's $7.5 billion will finance the military, Pastrana has said its success will depend on whether farmers
give up growing illegal crops for less lucrative ones. The government plans to subsidize those efforts early on, in exchange for promises not to return to coca
cultivation.

Also, after months of heightened violence before the start of Plan Colombia's military component, the second of three U.S.-trained anti-drug battalions is scheduled
to graduate this week. That will add 700 troops to government raids against more than 100,000 acres of coca crops, much of it controlled by the FARC in the
Vermont-size southern province.