He says Colombian army prepared for either peace or war

 By TIM JOHNSON
 Herald Staff Writer

 BOGOTA, Colombia -- In a strident warning, President Andres Pastrana on
 Tuesday exhorted leftist guerrillas to quit stalling on peace talks because ``the
 patience of this government and 38 million Colombians has its limits.''

 Speaking to Congress on Colombia's independence day, Pastrana said his
 administration will not balk at full-scale conflict with the guerrillas.

 ``We have an army prepared for peace -- but also an army prepared for war,''
 Pastrana said.

 Pastrana said he had pushed ahead ``even at the risk of my own life'' for talks with
 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an insurgency that has
 waged a 35-year war and holds sway through about half of the nation.

 ``We have advanced a lot. We have moved from dialogue to a negotiation
 process,'' he said. ``We have polished an agenda obtained with the democratic
 participation of political groups. But the path to peace is sown with thorns.''

 With his forceful remarks, Pastrana seemed to be trying to quell a public
 backlash against his government's concessions to guerrillas as well as voicing
 serious frustration that contacts with the FARC may be near collapse.

 Pastrana noted that he had met May 2 with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda, an
 aging former peasant. The two agreed, he said, to bring in a panel of foreigners to
 oversee a demilitarized region the size of Switzerland in south-central Colombia.
 The government cleared the area of soldiers and police last November in a
 good-faith gesture and the insurgency now controls the region entirely.

 ``In the last meeting with the FARC leader, it was agreed to establish an
 international commission . . . that would verify the rules of the game on the
 ground in the demilitarized zone,'' Pastrana said.

 But Pastrana noted that in recent contacts, ``FARC spokesmen said they
 considered the establishing of this commission . . . as inconvenient.''

 A FARC commander acknowledged last week that insurgents in the zone had
 executed people there who were considered enemy infiltrators. Army officers say
 they believe the guerrillas have dug tunnels in the zone to stockpile weapons,
 harbor kidnap victims and prepare terrorist attacks.

 Pastrana said he had sought a lasting peace ``against all odds'' but that ``a peace
 process without credibility or the guarantee of verification is nothing but a sterile
 process amid a fratricidal war.''

 He said he was ordering his top peace envoy, Victor G. Ricardo, to the region to
 press for agreement on setting up the commission but that his patience was
 wearing thin, ``and the leadership of the FARC should not mistake this reality.''