"As Enrique Peñalosa, the inspirational former mayor of Bogota, has pointed out: quality of life distribution is far more important than income distribution, and as economies become more complex, cities will be trying to attract human capital.
It surely must have crossed some minds in the Republic's powerful civil service that Irish diplomats might one day have to explain to a host government in Bogota, or Madrid, or Mexico City, that a bunch of Irishmen caught among the local insurgents were not reflecting Irish government policy, despite being connected in some way with the junior minister for foreign affairs.
But he also complained that last month, even as they were agreeing to speed up the talks, the FARC had begun a campaign of urban terrorism (applying techniques learned from three IRA men arrested in Bogota last year, say military intelligence).
But instead the 40 or so state-security agents who searched the Bogota offices of the Permanent Assembly for Peace, a coalition of peace groups, last week chose to break through a window at 5am.
"This is the year we plan to get on top of it," says Anne Patterson, the American ambassador in Bogota.
But hold your applause: this Friday, it's the men's turn to run Bogota all by themselves.
FOR the past three years, Colombians' hopes of an end to their country's conflicts have rested on a vast "demilitarised" zone south of Bogota, turned over to the FARC guerrillas to get peace talks going.
ESPERANZA LOPEZ, a waitress in Bogota, marched defiantly through the streets of the Colombian capital with a placard gripped tightly in her hand.
They have indicated that the Colombia agreement is dead until the government in Bogota makes a strong showing of prosecuting the killers of union members.
Bogota is to get a new 212-strong anti-terrorism police squad, and more than 30 new police posts in outlying suburbs.
The registered value of Colombia's national territory (of 114m hectares) is just $279 billion, of which property in Bogota, the capital, accounts for 40%.Its low value encourages owners of land to leave much of it fallow or sparsely grazed by a few cows.
