BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Colombian President Andres Pastrana
                 huddled with military chiefs Friday as his top negotiator met FARC rebels
                 for a second day of talks aimed at salvaging the peace process before next
                 Tuesday's deadline.

                 Pastrana called the commanders of the armed forces to a meeting at the Tolemaida
                 military base just outside the Andean mountain capital Bogota to analyze the
                 severely strained peace process with the 17,000-member Marxist guerrilla force.

                 The president must decide by midnight on Tuesday whether he will allow the
                 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known by the Spanish initials FARC --
                 continued use of a demilitarized enclave in the south.

                 Pastrana ordered the military out of the swath of jungle and cattle country as big as
                 Switzerland three years ago to grant the FARC a safe haven for peace talks to end a
                 37-year-old war which has claimed 40,000 lives in the past decade.

                 But the rebels converted what was expected to be a routine decision to extend the
                 enclave's life -- something which Pastrana has done nine times -- into a crisis when
                 they killed popular former culture minister Consuelo Araujo Saturday.

                 The government's chief peace negotiator, Camilo Gomez, met FARC commanders
                 in the demilitarized zone for a second day of talks Friday.

                 A poll soon after the killing of Araujo showed that 61 percent of Colombians
                 thought negotiations with the FARC should end. Araujo, a well-known promoter of
                 traditional Vallenato music which she sang in public with flowers in her hair, was
                 the wife of Attorney General Edgardo Maya and a personal friend of the president.

                 But Pastrana came to power in late 1998 promising peace and has devoted most of
                 his energy to that goal. Sending the army back into the territory nicknamed
                 "Farclandia" would mean the end of talks and leave his legacy in tatters with less
                 than a year of his term left to serve.

                 Now Pastrana is under severe pressure to extract major concessions from the
                 FARC -- such as a cease-fire -- or else close down the enclave, which critics say is
                 used for imprisoning kidnap victims, military training and as a base for cocaine
                 trafficking.

                 A former member of another Marxist guerrilla force who is now a political analyst
                 told Reuters that the most likely outcome next week would be an agreement to
                 extend the enclave in return for a commitment to discuss a cease-fire.

                 "It would be unthinkable in my opinion for the FARC to declare a unilateral
                 cease-fire. And an immediate cease-fire would be unthinkable. I think that there
                 could be some mechanism for discussing it, subject to a time limit," said Ricardo
                 Franco, a former senior member of the Popular Liberation Army, a small, Maoist
                 rebel group.

                 War has continued to rage around Colombia despite peace talks, with leftist rebels
                 regularly attacking the armed forces and far-right paramilitary outlaws targeting
                 suspected guerrilla sympathizers. The guerrillas' use of kidnapping for raising
                 money has given Colombia by far the world's highest number of incidents -- with
                 almost 4,000 abductions in 2000.

                 FARC rebels had kidnapped Araujo in northern Colombia a week before they killed
                 her, apparently because she was slowing them down as they tried to escape from
                 the army.

                 A senior FARC commander, Simon Trinidad, told weekly Tiempos del Mundo that
                 peace talks had made progress, but that Colombia's largest rebel army wanted
                 power and would never be interested in just finding a way to lay down its arms.

                 "Whether we gain power peacefully or by means of arms depends on the ruling
                 classes. If they are prepared to give up their privileges, we will negotiate, if not, we
                 will continue the armed struggle," said Trinidad, a former banker who is, ironically,
                 a relative by marriage of Araujo.

                    Copyright 2001 Reuters.