As Colombians prepared to go to the polls this Sunday in a second round runoff between liberal and conservative presidential candidates, international pressure has increased to find a peaceful solution to the nation's 50-year-old conflict.
Colombia's unemployment figures climbed to 15 per cent last month and a shrinking economy has left 60 per cent of people in poverty, but the deepening civil war has overshadowed all other issues in the election campaign.
The International Human Rights Office-Action for Colombia (OIDHACO), a coalition of European development agencies and Colombian human rights organisations, is the latest attempt to push for a peace process with broad citizen participation. The group will open an office in Bogota next month, sending back information to EU agencies and individual governments, assessing progress on human rights issues.
The OIDHACO faces an uphill battle as international organisations working in Colombia recently denounced a series of sinister visits to their European offices, including a retired army general "inquiring" about their work.
The coalition will also support a Human Rights Defenders project, helping 20 rights workers who face "imminent threat of assassination" to leave the country.
A recent US defence intelligence report, leaked to the Washington Post, warned that Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) could seize power "within five years", threatening Venezuelan oil fields, the main source of imported petroleum for the US, and the nearby Panama canal.
The leaked report coincided with the FARC's most significant offensive this decade, as up to 600 guerrillas routed elite counter-insurgency troops last March, killing 67 soldiers and capturing at least 30 more. Army survivors refused to return to the combat zone, sparking calls for a Latin American military task force led by Argentinian troops.
The US army sent teams of special forces trainers to assist the Colombian army, along with Blackhawk helicopters, legally destined for anti-drug operations only.
International human rights groups have sought guarantees that anti-drug equipment will not be used in counter-insurgency operations, as Colombia's armed forces have been implicated in massive human rights abuses. In one notorious case, paramilitary gunmen were flown in army planes to the isolated village of Mapiripan, where they killed 35 civilians accused of "collaborating" with local guerrillas.
The US government called the guerrillas "narco-terrorists" who "guard drugs, move drugs and grow drugs" and made Colombia its greatest recipient of military assistance in the hemisphere.
"The threat is intensifying" said Gen Wilhelm, chief of the US Southern Command, earlier this month. "The frightening possibilities of a narco-state just three hours by plane from Miami can no longer be dismissed," added a New York congressman, Mr Benjamin Gilman, chairman of the House International Relations committee.
The irony of the US government position is that the feared "narco-state" is already in power, according to the US government itself. The Clinton administration placed Colombia on its blacklist of nations which failed to make the grade in the war on drugs in 1996-1997, joining Iran and Libya. President Samper received $6 million in drug money to fund his 1994 election campaign. His US visa was immediately cancelled.
The Colombian and US governments have acknowledged that paramilitary gangs are financed by drug-traffickers and trained by army officials yet neither have explained why paramilitaries wage war on guerrilla supporters when they are supposedly partners in the drug business.
The FARC and National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels have an estimated 18,000 troops between them, with sophisticated weaponry and unlimited access to funds. They operate in 700 of the country's 1,071 districts. FARC rebels protect coca farmers and tax drug-traffickers, arguing that poor crop prices leave peasant farmers with little choice. "We will impose a total ban on drug-trafficking when alternative options are available to farmers," a rebel commander told this journalist last year.
The roots of Colombia's conflict lie in the grossly unequal distribution of wealth, the lack of any effective agrarian reform and the impunity of the nation's security forces.
This weekend's run-off is between Mr Samper's right-hand man Mr Horacio Serpa and a conservative, Mr Andres Pastrana, Washington's preferred candidate. Both men have promised rebel-government peace talks should they win the election.