"Our Mission: Win or Die!"

A defiant rebuff prolongs the siege in Bogota

"Liberty for all our companeros who have been tortured and are being judged!" The small woman was shouting angrily as she emerged from the panel truck outside the Dominican embassy in Bogota, which has served as a venue for negotiations between the Colombian government and the terrorists. "It is our final word! We are holding firm; our mission is to win or die!" Then the guerrilla, wearing jeans and a hood over her face, flashed a V-for-victory sign at the police and press clustered outside the embassy. With a defiant turn of heel, she strode back into the building, where a band of terrorists calling themselves the M-19 Group has been holding more than 20 ambassadors and other hostages.

With that dramatic outburst, the two-week siege lapsed back into a tense standoff. Negotiating for her fellow terrorists, the woman had just rejected a promising response by the Colombian government to the most sensitive guerrilla demand: the release of 311 accused terrorists, most of them M-19 members, from Colombian jails. The proposal: speeding up the trials and sentencing of more than 200 prisoners now held under military detention. The concession almost certainly would have meant early acquittal for some. Others would have been freed if their sentences matched time already spent in jail. Still other detainees would probably have been transferred from military to civilian jurisdiction, where they could expect more lenient judgments.

The plan was an ingenious way of releasing some prisoners without formally capitulating to the terrorists' demands or, technically at least, violating the Colombian constitution. The compromise scheme, drawn up by President Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala after his ruling Liberal Party made a strong showing (54% of the vote) in nationwide municipal elections early last week, had been intended as a concession that could lead the way out of the deadlock. In fact, the government had already named a blue-ribbon panel of nine civilian jurists to oversee the legal procedures. The terrorists' rebuff thus came as a severe disappointment.

In four earlier negotiating sessions between two foreign ministry delegates and the woman guerrilla--always accompanied by Mexican Ambassador Ricardo Galan, representing the hostages--both sides had apparently made some concessions. The terrorists, under the orders of a mysterious masked chieftain called Comandante Uno, reportedly scaled down their original ransom demand from $50 million to $10 million; they also stopped insisting on worldwide dissemination of their revolutionary manifesto. For its part, the government promised a kind of prearranged amnesty for the entrenched terrorists by offering them safe passage out of the country and a plane to fly them to countries of asylum. At week's end Fidel Castro offered Cuba as a haven.

Life inside the embassy compound, meanwhile, appeared to be settling into an uneasy routine. Among the ambassadors, all were said to be standing up well under the pressure, except one: Venezuela's Virgilio Lovera, 63, a gregarious political appointee diplomat who, at one point last week, was treated by a cardiologist summoned to the embassy. Hitherto known for his lavish parties, Lovera bombarded his embassy and newspapers with telephoned pleas for capitulation. Implored Lovera, in one such call: "This is not a legal problem. This is a human problem that should be resolved in concordance with the law of God to preserve human life. We hostages are what is called in Caracas the ham in the sandwich."

By contrast, the U.S. Ambassador, Spanish-born Diego Asencio, in his own daily phone calls to U.S. officials was reported to be maintaining steady nerves and preparing for a long siege. One grim alternative, of course, was an armed assault on the embassy. But, as one antiterrorist specialist on the scene warned, "that could be very, very bloody."

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