By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 20 -- Preparing his country for a broader war, President Andres Pastrana tonight ended peace talks with Colombia's largest guerrilla
army and ordered his military into a vast rebel haven in the south. The decision came hours after rebels hijacked a commercial airliner and kidnapped a prominent
senator.

In a national address tonight, Pastrana referred for the first time to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as a "terrorist" organization and warned
that the guerrillas' response to the move was likely to be acts of terrorism. The president, who was elected on a pledge to end Colombia's nearly four-decade civil
war, mobilized ground troops and an elite rapid-deployment force to retake a 16,000-square-mile guerrilla haven in southern Colombia that he ceded to the FARC
three years ago as a venue for peace talks.

The army was scheduled to begin retaking the area's five major urban areas at midnight, and it was unclear what kind of resistance the guerrillas would mount.
According to military estimates, the FARC may have as many as 8,000 troops in the haven, which is the size of Switzerland.

"Hard times are coming, without a doubt," Pastrana said. "We must be prepared because it is possible that they will increase their terrorist acts" in the coming days.

The rupture, coming just six months before Pastrana leaves office, appears to end a troubled peace process that has yielded few results over the past three years and
has deeply divided the country over how to take on a potent guerrilla force financed in large part by a thriving drug trade. But the imperfect process has been viewed
as a buffer against a wider war in Colombia, now in the grips of a civil conflict in which two guerrilla groups are battling the Colombian military and a growing
paramilitary force.

Pastrana assured Colombians that the armed forces, improved in recent years thanks in part to U.S. military aid, were ready to take on the guerrillas. He also urged
his audience to engage in civil resistance against the guerrillas, saying that "an army of 40 million Colombians is undefeatable."

Pastrana's decision, made after meetings with his senior military commanders, was prompted by an audacious hijacking carried out this morning by members of the
FARC. A Dash-8 twin-propeller plane carrying 35 passengers and crew members from the southern city of Neiva to the capital was hijacked at gunpoint by four
guerrillas.

When the plane landed near the town of Hobo, about 27 miles south of Neiva, it was met by at least 50 guerrillas, passengers said. The hijackers fled south to the
guerrilla haven with Sen. Jorge Eduardo Gechem Turbay -- whose cousin was killed by the FARC in December 2000 -- and perhaps two other hostages.

Camilo Gomez, the country's high commissioner for peace, announced that government peace negotiators and 10 foreign ambassadors mediating the peace talks
were being withdrawn from the guerrilla zone.

The group had been scheduled to meet with FARC negotiators today to continue talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire agreement by early April. Gomez said members
of the FARC's Teofilo Forero Column, a mobile unit based inside the haven, carried out the hijacking. The guerrilla leadership had no immediate response.

"This is something of such seriousness that it could not have been carried out without the knowledge of the FARC's secretariat," Gomez said, referring to the guerrilla
group's ruling body.

Last month, Pastrana threatened to send in the military to retake the swath of southern pasture and jungle. He has expressed frustration at the FARC's obstinacy at
the peace table as violence has continued across the country, last year claiming 3,000 lives.

The haven has been used by the guerrillas to stage military attacks, train recruits and increase coca cultivation to boost their finances. The United States, while
supporting Pastrana's peace efforts, has long been skeptical about the haven, citing the strategic military value it provides the guerrillas. The FARC, an
18,000-member Marxist insurgency that began in 1964, is on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Last month, Pastrana dropped a threat to retake the rebel haven after the guerrillas rejoined peace talks that they had abandoned in October to protest an increased
military presence around the zone's perimeter. The FARC dropped its demand that the military be pulled back from the zone, and also agreed to a negotiating
schedule that set an April 7 deadline for the two sides to agree to a cease-fire.

But almost immediately the guerrillas began a series of attacks on towns and military installations that left dozens of soldiers and civilians dead. Many analysts here
said they believed the attacks were an attempt by the rebels to offset the embarrassment they suffered by caving into Pastrana's demands.

The attacks have hardened Colombian public opinion against the peace process, a shift that in the view of many people here will open the way for the most hard-line
candidate to win the presidential election scheduled for May.

                                               © 2002