BOGOTA, Jan 13 (Reuters) - President Andres Pastrana is hoping to galvanize support for Colombia's fragile peace process when he travels to Havana on Thursday for talks with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President-elect Hugo Chavez.
Pastrana, whose government opened preliminary talks with his country's main Marxist rebel group last week, will be the first Colombian head of state to visit the communist-ruled island.
Castro and Chavez, the failed coup leader who won a landslide election victory last month, have already pledged their backing for efforts to end Colombia's long-running war, which has killed more than 35,000 people, most of them civilians, in the past decade.
But political analysts say they are seen as commanding figures who wield considerable influence over Colombia's leading guerrilla groups.
Pastrana has indicated that he may ask both of them, or certainly at least Castro, to play a direct, hands-on role in brokering any eventual peace accords.
"The support that the Cuban president can give to the peace process is fundamental," Pastrana told reporters this week.
Pastrana has made peace the top priority of his 5-month-old government.
But Manuel Marulanda, veteran leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), snubbed the 44-year-old president by refusing to meet him at a ceremony last Thursday launching the formal start of the peace talks.
The sense that negotiations had gotten off to an inauspicious beginning was reinforced by Marulanda's right-hand man, Jorge Briceno, who infuriated Pastrana this week by saying the FARC would kidnap leading politicians and "oligarchs" unless the government bows to rebel demands for a controversial prisoner exchange.
Pastrana and Castro have met twice before, most recently in October at the Iberoamerican Summit in Oporto, Portugal. But the threat that Colombia's peace process could unravel, even before it gets started in earnest, has given a sense of urgency to their latest face-to-face talks.
Colombian Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez de Soto has sought to play down the importance of the Cuban visit, saying Colombia's peace process needs the support of everyone, including the United States, Mexico and Spain.
But political analysts stress that the FARC and the Cuban- inspired National Liberation Army, Colombia's second largest guerrilla group, see Castro and Chavez in a much different light than they do U.S. President Bill Clinton or the neoliberal leaders of Mexico and Spain.
The election of Chavez, a stunning defeat for politics-as- usual in Venezuela, was hailed by FARC leaders as a victory for the underclass across Latin America.
Rebels are certain to have taken note of the fact that Chavez -- who has the image of a radical populist and champion of the poor -- paid his first visit to Cuba in 1994, shortly after his release from prison for his botched coup attempt two years earlier.
Castro, meanwhile, is seen as the crusading leader of the last bastion of communism in the Western hemisphere, even though he has gone on record as saying the days when leftist insurgencies could seize power through armed struggle are long over.
"There is an immense significance to the fact that the maximum leader of the Cuban revolution, someone who has been accused on repeated occasions of promoting subversion in Latin America, supports reconciliation in Colombia," said Antonio Yepes Parra, a former Colombian ambassador to Cuba.
"It's evident that at one time the Cuban government had close contact with the country's guerrilla groups," he added, speaking in an interview with Medellin's El Colombiano newspaper. "Those ties, which were once a cause for discord, could help a great deal on this long and difficult journey we're embarking on."
If Pastrana fails to wins political support for the peace process -- Colombia's first in seven years -- he may appeal to a higher authority on Feb. 1. Aides say he is to be received at the Vatican on that date by Pope John Paul II.
20:02 01-13-99
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited