COLOMBIA: One of the bloodiest massacres in nearly 40 years of civil war has led Colombia's largest rebel group to seek new peace talks. Meanwhile, President Andres Pastrana was yesterday to visit the church in Bojaya where 119 people, mostly women and children, were bombed to death.
"We'll go to the area to lend a hand and see how we can best help the victims of the attack," Mr Pastrana told reporters in Bogota yesterday after meeting with top officials at the defence ministry.
Besides Bojaya, 360 miles west of Bogota, Mr Pastrana said he would also visit the village of Vigia del Fuerte, where some 100 victims of the May 2nd attack are recovering from their injuries.
A propane gas tank and shrapnel was tossed into the church where some 300 people had taken refuge during a four-day gun battle between leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries for control of the town. It killed 119 civilians, mainly women and children.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is the only armed group using mortars fashioned from commercial gas bottles, officials said.
Nearly 4,000 of Bojaya's 11,000 residents have fled the town and another 3,400 have no food, according to local officials.
Mr Pastrana deemed the attack a "genocide" by FARC, adding that he hoped the EU would "very quickly" include the guerrillas on its list of terrorist organisations.
Colombians on Wednesday demonstrated outside the French embassy in Bogota to protest at the EU's refusal to consider FARC a terrorist group.
Stung by the outcry and the terrorist label, FARC on Wednesday proposed to renew peace talks with whoever wins the May 26th presidential election.
Mr Pastrana on Monday called for a UN investigation into the Bojaya massacre, pointing to the UN's readiness to send a team to the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, where only half as many people were killed by Israeli troops.
• The chief of Colombia's anti-narcotics police said yesterday that US aid to his force has been suspended for alleged mishandling of funds.
He said six officials had been suspended in the alleged corruption case.
Gen Gustavo Socha told reporters that an investigation of "possible procedural errors in the acquisition of assets" granted as part of US assistance under Plan Colombia was under way.
- (AFP)