"Ireland," said guerrilla leader Antonio Garcia, reading my Irish Times press badge. "You know Simas Hynee? Surely you know Simas Hynee? I own three of his books."

Only Colombians find it normal that a guerrilla leader who has fought the state for 20 years should also be a poet and a Seamus Heaney fan.

Antonio Garcia is military commander of Colombia's Army of National Liberation, (ELN). The 6,000-member ELN, founded in the early 1960s by Spanish worker-priests influenced by the Cuban revolution, is Colombia's second guerrilla force. Although militarily insignificant compared to the guerrilla movement, FARC, it is still capable of inflicting economic mayhem.

It proved this when, in an effort to force the government to take it seriously, it went on the rampage last April, seizing control of major highways, blowing up bridges linking Bogota with the next largest city, Medellin, and dynamiting hundreds of electricity pylons and telecommunication posts.

This week, at the invitation of the Swiss government, Garcia arrived in Geneva leading an ELN delegation for a meeting with Colombian Peace Commissioner Camilo Gomez and 80 members of Colombia's political and civil society. They included opposition politicians, conservative businessmen and cattlemen, left-wing union leaders and academics, representatives of the Colombian Catholic Church, ex-guerrillas, the attorney general, and leaders of the peace movement and non-governmental community. The ELN had invited FARC to send an observer, but FARC leaders, who feel they have the monopoly on the peace process, declined to attend.

Cuba, France, Norway, Switzerland and Spain worked together to facilitate and mediate the meeting, the objective of which was to build confidence between guerrillas and government, as a step to accelerate future negotiations.

There was goodwill on all sides. From the start it was clear both government and guerrillas were determined to bring home something positive.

Recognising the government has become a prisoner of those elements in Colombia who oppose the peace process, a source close to the ELN said: "We need to construct a bullet-proof vest here to wrap around this process."

Civil society's chief hope was for the agreement of an early ceasefire, and a mutual commitment to accept international humanitarian law principles and end kidnapping.

Unlike FARC, and except in isolated cases, the ELN rejects all connection to drugs. Its chief source of finance comes from blackmailing multinational oil companies whose pipelines it regularly dynamites. But it also kidnaps for political and financial ends. Now it has received international recognition and has begun preliminary talks with the government, the pressure is on it to return all its hostages - about a dozen people - and stop kidnapping.

After the meeting ended this week, the relatives of four hostages the ELN still holds from the hijacking of an aircraft in April 1999 had a meeting with ELN commander Felipe Torres to plead for their immediate release.

Torres, one of two ELN prisoners whom the government temporarily released from jail to attend the meeting, admitted international pressure to release the hostages had been intense. Especially, he said, from Cuba. It is reported that Fidel Castro sent the ELN a message that if it wanted to keep Cuba on board the process it must stop kidnapping.

The ELN's approach to the peace process differs from FARC's in its stated insistence that civil society be the chief protagonist. "Civil society must guide the destiny of the country and decide in what direction they want to go," says Torres. To this end, the ELN wants a troop-free "peace zone" where it can hold a National Convention.

When Antonio Garcia spoke at the first session he said: "We are a young society, and young societies make mistakes. We all make mistakes, and our organisation is no exception. We must have the courage to recognise them and correct them."

But the ELN is trying to initiate peace negotiations at a time when the space for peace is shrinking fast, and the government's ability to keep its commitments has foundered on its loss of control over an ultra-right coalition of drug traffickers, large landowners, and retired and active service army officers, hell-bent on destroying the peace process and establishing what many fear will be a fascist para-narco-state.

In Geneva, on Monday evening, the mood was cheerful, things were going well. There was news there could even be a meeting in Bogota next Monday to discuss a ceasefire. "From what I have seen", one participant reported, "both sides are determined to reach an agreement".

Then everything changed. Word filtered down to the reporters in the hotel lobby that the guerrillas had walked out. Ever since the delegations arrived in Geneva, confusing rumours of a paramilitary offensive in ELN territory had ebbed and flowed. It was said a paramilitary helicopter had strafed the little village where the ELN had received the government, the church and the ambassadors just weeks ago to discuss the Geneva meeting. On Tuesday afternoon, unable to make contact with their headquarters, Antonio Garcia and his companions left the room.

What happened in ELN territory during the Geneva talks is still unknown. But the ELN did not walk away. They returned to sign a joint agreement supporting efforts to proceed with the peace process.

For something of immense importance happened in Geneva on Tuesday. The peace process was salvaged by the intervention of the international community. Cuba, France, Norway, Spain and Switzerland offered to create a commission to go to Colombia, visit ELN territory, find out what happened and help both sides find a secure "peace zone" where talks can be held. The ELN have always wanted to internationalise the peace process. So has the government. If there is any future for peace, it will only happen through just this kind of hands-on international help.

Postscript: On Wednesday morning there was a robbery in the Movenpick Hotel in Geneva. Two Spanish-speaking men forced the sound engineer who had recorded the peace talks to hand over a suitcase with the tapes of 30 hours of talks.