The three-week tour through Europe by a joint delegation of senior FARC guerrilla leaders and Colombian government negotiators ended last Friday in Paris.
This politically imaginative and courageous initiative offers tantalising evidence that we are witnessing a pivotal moment in the 20-year search, paved with failures, for a solution to Colombia's 40 years of bloodletting. However, developments in Washington, where President Clinton's massive aid package to the Colombian army is being debated, undercut any undue optimism.
The Colombian delegation's European trip brought the protagonists of the peace effort to Sweden, Norway, Italy, the Vatican - they were received by the Pope's envoy - Switzerland - to talk to the International Red Cross about International Human Rights law - Spain and France. In Madrid, the guerrilla leaders, stunned by the Spanish reaction to a single ETA bombing, joined the Spanish parliament in a minute's silence to mourn the victims. The trip has kick-started negotiations on an agenda that both sides agree must lay the basis of the "new Colombia" the FARC seeks to construct at the peace talks. It has also given the rebels the international political legitimacy they badly need to build a political home base commensurate with their military power.
If the talks stay on track, and the rebels live up to the expectations they created in Europe, including a ceasefire, this first international sortie could eventually succeed in enlisting crucial European political and financial support. This is needed to underpin the peace talks with economic development and crop substitution programmes, so that poor coca farmers, who currently supply the drug trade, can recycle their lives into legal activities.
Throughout Europe, the FARC leaders were received on terms of equal status with the governments' delegates. They were accorded the recognition due to representatives of a legitimate political force. By contrast, in Washington, the passage of Mr Clinton's military aid bill is perceived by many to be dependent on the demonisation of the Colombian insurgents. The chief architect of the new legislation, Gen ) Barry McCaffrey, testified in the Senate on Friday that he considers both the FARC and the smaller ELN insurgents to be "terrorist organisations".
In Washington, a total silence reigns about events in Europe.
The administration seeks $1.6 billion aid for Colombia, most of it for the army. Ostensibly, the aid is for counter-narcotics programmes. But no one is fooled. This is a classic counter-insurgency plan designed to intensify the fight against the FARC and drive them from territories they have controlled for 30 years.
The US administration argues that the "narco-guerrillas" derive an estimated 54 per cent of their funds by taxing the drug crops, and that eliminating the coca fields will put them out of business. Their plan also anticipates the enforced displacement of some 17,000 peasant families and includes $145 million to help resettle them. Colombians say the number will be far larger and anticipate mayhem as tens of thousands of enraged coca farmers mobilise to protest against the destruction of their sole source of livelihood.
The Clinton bill is not faring well in Washington. Nervous legislators fear being drawn into a bottomless pit with no exit strategy in view. The spectre of Vietnam looms. Listening to testimony from the Commander of US Southern Command, responsible for Hemispheric security, Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska demanded: "Who's going to go in if this blows up? Tell me this is not a Vietnam again." "When I go to Colombia, I do not feel a quagmire sucking at my boots," the general replied. Mr Stevens was unconvinced.
Then, on Wednesday last, New York-based Human Rights Watch announced its most recent documentation of direct contributions - through active duty officers, weapons, ammunition and uniforms - by the Colombian army to the savage paramilitary groups who are accounted responsible for almost 80 per cent of village massacres.
This documentation of criminal collusion by three army brigades, including the capital's, with paramilitary atrocities and high-profile death squad killings a, was highly embarrassing to US and Colombian officials. They were not helped by the Chief of Staff of the Colombian Army, who accused the prestigious HRW organisation of "conspiring with drug-traffickers to defame the army".
HRW's information prompted two senators to call for stricter conditions to stop US aid going to army units linked to paramilitaries. It could conceivably derail congressional approval altogether. At the least, according to one Washington insider , "this package is not going to come out the way it went in".
Maybe the peace negotiators have a breathing space after all. A source close to the Colombian delegation in Europe said the most significant development of the trip was the sense of camaraderie, the jokes, the mutual growth of confidence and understanding between delegates from both sides. This kind of relationship was crucial to the success of the Oslo talks between the Israelis and the PLO, and for the South African peace process. It would seem criminal to waste such an asset.
Two gunmen killed a retired general, a counter-insurgency expert, in La Vega, 80 km from Bogota, yesterday.