LONDON -- "In the next days, we'll know if Colombia is choosing peace or war," said United Nations envoy James LeMoyne as time ran out on last weekend's government ultimatum to the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, with whom President Andres Pastrana has been holding peace talks for over three years. At two hours to midnight on Monday, FARC's leaders backed down, but that doesn't mean that Colombia is going to get peace.
What was at risk over the past two weeks was "Farclandia," the Switzerland-size enclave in southeastern Colombia that Pastrana turned over to the country's biggest guerrilla group soon after taking office in 1998 as a token of his good intentions. But in three years of talks the government side never even persuaded FARC to start serious discussions on a ceasefire, and outside its safe zone FARC went on waging its war of kidnaps and murders with undiminished enthusiasm.
So did its smaller rival, the National Liberation Army, while the rightwing paramilitaries retaliated with the usual massacres of suspected rebel sympathizers. The death toll last year was around 3,500, just below the 10-year average. The crisis in the peace talks has passed, at least for the moment, but the death toll for this year will probably be the same.