Colombia Government

The government signed a peace treaty with a band of leftist insurgents, who pledged to throw their arms into the Caribbean Sea. The pact with the Revolutionary Workers' Party ends eight years of hostilities. It is the second to be signed with Colombian guerrillas this year. In March, the larger M-19 rebel group signed a peace treaty in exchange for amnesty.

The imperfectly healed stump that was once his left leg makes Luis Alfonso Quintero wince in pain, emotional as much as physical. With a useless half-limb, how will he tend his emerald-green fields, or cross the village square without a care? How will he put food on the table for his seven kids, or dandle the youngest in his lap? These were the simple things that defined the Quintero's life until the day last year that a land mine exploded underneath him.

The Colombian government granted Medellin drug cartel members new legal guarantees Monday in yet another concession to try to persuade them to turn themselves in. But the administration of President Cesar Gaviria tried to answer critics' charges that it is caving in to traffickers by rejecting the cartel's main condition for such a mass surrender.

As this frontier town slept Saturday morning, Pvt. Daladio Torres and 300 comrades slipped into the main square at dawn, the first soldiers to enter the former rebel capital in three years. Torres strode through the silence to a rebel flag flying at the square's edge, tore it down and threw it in the nearest waste container. "This is a disrespect to Colombia," he said. "This flag belongs in the trash."

As this frontier town slept Saturday morning, Pvt. Daladio Torres and 300 comrades slipped into the main square at dawn, the first soldiers to enter the former rebel capital in three years. Torres strode through the silence to a rebel flag flying at the square's edge, tore it down and threw it in the nearest waste container. "This is a disrespect to Colombia," he said. "This flag belongs in the trash."

Some of the Medellin cartel's most notorious and ruthless cocaine bandits have fallen in battle. Its top trafficker, Pablo Escobar, is a man on the run, reportedly no longer managing his billion-dollar business. American and Colombian officials say this country's cocaine production is down by about one-fourth from mid-1989. Drug hauls by Colombian security forces so far this year exceed the record total for 1989. And a new president is vowing to battle violent drug lords "without concession."

Pablo Escobar, the billionaire cocaine lord who eluded an intense police manhunt for seven years, surrendered to Colombian authorities Wednesday in exchange for a promise of leniency for drug-related crimes and a guarantee against extradition to the United States.

The government relented Monday and promised to renew protection for the family of fugitive drug lord Pablo Escobar, a day after the relatives tried and failed to find asylum abroad. The family fears a clandestine paramilitary group that has been killing Escobar's associates. They left after the government canceled their guards.

In a major escalation of the already bloody war between the Colombian government and narcotics traffickers, presumed drug barons attacked one of the nation's most important newspapers, setting off a powerful truck bomb that killed at least one person and wounded at least 83 more. The 6:40 a.m.

Drug magnate Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha may be losing his billionaire status. Among Colombia's beleaguered kings of cocaine, Rodriguez Gacha has been hit hardest by an unprecedented campaign of official raids and confiscations over the past two weeks, a high Colombian intelligence official told The Times.

A road leaving this teeming frontier town winds toward a series of cliffs that soar over river gorges. Etched into one cliff, with a sweeping view of wild, unspoiled jungle, lies an emblem of the problems facing Colombia's peace process. It is a massive sculpture, 30 feet high and 130 feet long, hewn from the rock. The artwork features a winged Manuel Marulanda, the leader of this country's largest rebel group, the FARC, approaching Simon Bolivar, South America's legendary liberator.

The government and rebel leaders reached a last-minute accord Monday to restart peace talks, pulling Colombia back from the brink of a full-blown war. A group of 10 ambassadors persuaded the two sides to end their standoff only hours before a deadline for troops to retake a demilitarized zone that the government ceded to the country's largest rebel army--the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC--three years ago for peace negotiations.

It is late on a Monday afternoon, and there is nobody in sight. The whitewashed health clinic is shuttered. Weeds and wildflowers swarm over a row of crumbling homes. The cheery signs plastered across the front of the school--"Honor," "Respect," "Love"--hang over shattered windows.

The government began a complete withdrawal of its troops from a leftist rebel stronghold, hoping to encourage a resumption of peace talks with the nation's second-largest guerrilla force. Military officials said 1,000 of an estimated 3,000 soldiers had left the territory as part of the withdrawal, which may be a step toward granting the National Liberation Army, or ELN, a demilitarized enclave.

Rebel leader Manuel "Sure Shot" Marulanda has agreed to Colombian President Andres Pastrana's demand for face-to-face talks in a guerrilla enclave to revive stalled peace talks, a rebel commander said Friday. Alfonso Cano, chief ideologue of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, told reporters that Marulanda, who formed the FARC in the mid-1960s, had agreed to meet Thursday with Pastrana. "I agree . . . that we need to meet again.

With the government nearing a deal to give rebels control over a Delaware-size territory, the area's residents expressed anger Saturday that plans were going ahead despite their objections. Delegates from the government and the leftist guerrilla group, National Liberation Army, or ELN, presented residents in Bolivar state on Friday with the first concrete details of the demilitarized zone where peace talks would be held.

The assassination of presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro Leongomez on a commercial airline flight triggered a barrage of outrage Friday over the Colombian government's failure to control terrorist violence. The Thursday slaying was the latest in a long series of so-called "magnicides" and other terrorist killings.

U.S. anti-drug agencies suffer from "large gaps" in their knowledge of how the Colombian cocaine cartels operate, and even when important information is obtained, it is not used effectively, a Senate report obtained Monday concludes. The report of the Republican staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs permanent investigations subcommittee, which began its inquiry a year ago, charged that U.S.

Armed rebels released 42 Colombian police and soldiers to a government envoy Saturday, giving some of the captives their first taste of liberty in years and clearing the path for peace talks. After marching the captives out of a jungle hide-out, fighters from the leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN, released them to government peace envoy Camilo Gomez in the northern village of Convencion, a presidential statement said.

A high-profile kidnap drama, staged by Colombia's right-wing paramilitary warlord to press for a role in peace talks between the government and Marxist rebels, ended peacefully Tuesday with the release of six captive lawmakers, authorities said. Two other legislators, including a former president of the Senate, were freed Monday. The six turned over Tuesday, to delegates from the church and International Committee of the Red Cross, were the last remaining hostages.