MEDELLIN, Colombia - 13-August-2002 - Colombia appears on the verge of a major escalation of its nearly 40-year-old civil war, with optimism shrinking among human rights groups about reviving peace efforts - a cause championed by Colombia's churches.

The country's new president, Alvaro Uribe, yesterday (August 12) declared a national state of emergency after five days of violence that left more than 100 dead following his inauguration last week. The state of emergency allows President Uribe to curtail some basic civil liberties.

Uribe's inauguration on August 7 was overshadowed by a mortar attack in the capital, Bogota, that killed at least 19 people and damaged the presidential palace.

Authorities blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for the surprise attack which stunned observers by its ferocity and because it occurred amid tight security.

"What we saw yesterday [on August 7] was a clear confirmation that the guerrillas are at war with the state," said Jorge Rojas, the director of the Bogota-based Consultancy for Human Rights and the Displaced.

"Today in Colombia, men on both sides have maps preparing for war," Rojas told ENI in an interview in New York prior to his return to Bogota.

Rojas and others in Colombian and US human rights and church groups are concerned that Uribe, with increased US military aid at his disposal, will now unleash the power of the state in ways that will result in more civilian casualties and target members of civil society.

"Uribe feels there are ways to institutionalize the war," Rojas said.

He warned against emergency powers that could result in a kind of "semi-dictatorship." Rojas' organization is a secular-based group that works with US and Colombian church organizations.

His statements echoed concerns expressed recently by Colombian and US observers with links to the churches.

They fear that Colombia is headed for a situation not unlike the early 1970s in Argentina and Chile or the 1980s in El Salvador, when members of peace and human rights groups - many with church ties - were targeted for killings by right-wing paramilitaries and armed groups linked to the governments in power.

The New York Times reported on August 10 that the Bush administration, through recent anti-terrorism legislation, is authorizing $1.7 billion in direct military assistance to the Uribe government to be used expressly for fighting the leftist guerrillas.

Uribe came to power on May 26 in a landslide victory under the slogan, "Firm hand, kind heart" - buoyed by a war-weary population frustrated by increasing violence and by the collapse of peace talks between the FARC and the government of outgoing President Andres Pastrana.

Human rights and church groups in the past have criticized the Colombian government for ties with right-wing paramilitary groups.

Uribe, however, has promised that fighting right-wing paramilitaries will also be a priority.
In the first major combat since he became president, government troops reportedly killed dozens of right-wing paramilitaries in the central province of Antioquia, where Uribe once served as governor.

Rojas told ENI he did not believe either the government or the guerrillas could win militarily and that eventually there would be a need to return to peace negotiations. He acknowledged, however, there was little public sentiment now for peace talks.

It would be up to Colombia's Roman Catholic Church and smaller Protestant churches to lay such a foundation for the future.

"As never before, the role of the church will be important in orientating this policy," he said.

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