By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 9 -- Breathing new life into Colombia's faltering peace process, President Andres Pastrana and the country's top guerrilla commander
agreed today to resume negotiations in a revived effort to arrange a swift cease-fire and bring an end to decades of civil war.

Pastrana and Manuel Marulanda, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), emerged from two days of meetings in rebel-held territory this
afternoon with a blueprint for rescuing a peace process that many regarded as moribund. They announced that a cease-fire agreement will be among the first topics
discussed when negotiations resume Feb. 14 after a three-month lapse that had almost ended the talks entirely.

"We have revived the peace process in this country," Pastrana said. "This is what is fundamental."

The agreement culminated two days that transfixed Colombians, who in recent months have taken an increasingly dim view of the president and his peace process.
U.S. officials also said they were not holding their breath as Pastrana, meeting under a thatched pavilion with the craggy rebel chief, tried to bring the FARC back to
the negotiating table. But after he spent the night in the FARC's safe haven and walked with scant security among hundreds of guerrilla troops, even the president's
critics applauded his effort to avoid the broader war that would likely have followed collapse of the negotiating process.

Guerrilla negotiators left the talks in November, accusing the government of failing to take on privately funded paramilitary groups that battle the rebels illegally but on
the same side as the army. Since then, U.S. diplomats and an increasing number of Colombians have called on the president to take a harder line with the
17,000-member guerrilla army, including ending the safe haven created two years ago in southern Colombia as a venue for peace talks.

But today the president's high-wire journey to meet Marulanda, who has spent more than half his 70 years leading the FARC, seemed to pay off. Side by side, the
men announced that for the first time international observers would be invited to attend the talks and that negotiators would begin working on a plan to exchange
guerrilla prisoners for Colombian security forces held by the FARC.

"This meeting came up with concrete ways of continuing this process," Marulanda said.

Addressing the FARC's chief concerns, the men agreed to create a national commission to study ways of battling the paramilitary forces and recommend other
measures to decrease violence in a country that last year registered an average of 71 violent deaths a day. Known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia,
the paramilitary groups are growing rapidly and pose perhaps the biggest threat to the FARC and other leftist insurgencies.

Pastrana was elected in June 1998 to end the long war, only to see violence escalate. In recent weeks, he has been under pressure to end a seemingly aimless peace
process viewed skeptically by Washington for some time. But today's agreement, described by a Pastrana aide as "much more than we expected," gave the president
new reasons to continue.

After the meeting adjourned, Pastrana announced that he would extend the FARC demilitarized zone for eight months. As part of the declaration, government and
guerrilla negotiators agreed to meet three times a week when talks resume. The negotiations have been criticized for operating on a timetable left largely to the whims
of the FARC, and Pastrana aides said today that the new schedule was meant to step up the pace.

But Pastrana's conservative critics, while applauding his effort, said the agreement did not go far enough. Alvaro Uribe Velez, a former governor of Antioquia state
and opposition party presidential candidate, said Pastrana should have won a cease-fire agreement from the FARC before agreeing to renew its safe haven. He also
criticized the president for appearing to choose sides among Colombia's illegal armed groups.

"In a state governed by the rule of law, the government should not agree with one violent irregular actor over another," said Uribe, who is viewed as the presidential
candidate most favored by paramilitary groups and their supporters.

Marulanda also said he supported nonmilitary elements of the U.S.-backed anti-drug strategy known as Plan Colombia. The $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, the bulk
of which is for military hardware and people to train three Colombian anti-drug battalions, targets the country's vast coca and poppy crops. Drugs provide the FARC
with much of its revenue, and Pastrana has said the guerrilla group will be more inclined to seek peace as its chief source of cash dries up.

The agreement endorsed programs that encourage farmers to give up drug crops for legal ones, but tacitly criticized U.S.-backed aerial spraying by calling for
stronger measures to protect Colombia's environment. Colombian farmers, along with European diplomats, have criticized the spraying for killing food crops along
with illegal drug crops.

The FARC's biggest victory is creation of the commission on the paramilitary forces. The guerrilla group wants representation on the commission, but Pastrana and
Marulanda said its membership has not been decided. A second commission will be formed to study obstacles to the peace process as they arise in hopes that formal
negotiations will not lapse again.

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