Dutch Fighter in Colombia Peace Talks Role Tanja Nijmeijer, 34, is a middle-class child of the Netherlands who for the past decade has been mixed up in a Latin American revolution as a jungle fighter, at least once narrowly escaping death in a military bombardment. And though her current role in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is not exactly clear, Nijmeijer is drawing plenty of attention within the rebel delegation for peace talks that are set to begin Monday in Havana. Colombian government officials privately grumble that Nijmeijer, the only known rebel fighter from outside Latin America, will be an unwelcome distraction at the talks on ending a half-century-old conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Nijmeijer is expected to play some sort of a public relations role, putting an international face on a peasant-based movement with no fluent English speakers in its top ranks. They say I'm here because I've been in the FARC for 10 years, am a guerrilla and speak English. I can translate our documents. That's useful," the Dutch newspaper Trouw quoted her as saying in an interview published last weekend. Her PR value to the insurgents was evident in a YouTube music video the FARC released early this month to mark her arrival in Cuba. In it, she raps with other rebels, then sings and strums guitar in a ballad honoring slain former FARC field marshal Jorge Briceno. "She is going to be a very useful woman," said Jorge Enrique Botero, an independent Colombian journalist who first met her in 2003, a year after she joined the Western Hemisphere's oldest active insurgency. She is physically very strong and is full of political conviction, which is reflected in each and every one of her words. A former Romance language major, she speaks German, French and Italian in addition to English, Spanish and her native Dutch, he says. She also has apparently plunged fully into some of the FARC's more controversial activities: shaking down businesses, setting bombs and helping hold hostages. Nijmeijer is wanted for arrest in Colombia on rebellion charges but that warrant was suspended during the peace talks at the government's request, said Colombia's chief prosecutor, Eduardo Montealegre. The United States has not, however, lifted an arrest warrant that names her as a co-conspirator in the hostage-holding of three U.S. military contractors who were captive for five years until their 2008 rescue along with former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Five months after the Americans' single-engine surveillance plane crashed in rebel territory after a mechanical failure, Nijmeijer served as their translator when they were interviewed by Botero for a proof-of-life video. Nijmeijer first visited Colombia in 2000 on a work-exchange program after writing her thesis on the FARC at the University of Groningen in her homeland. She taught English to well-heeled children at a private school in the western city of Pereira. Nijmeijer's politics also were shaped by her experience volunteering almost daily in a shantytown near Pereira. "Colombia was the turning point," a college friend who worked with Nijmeijer in Colombia told The Associated Press in 2007. "She was so shocked by the gap between the rich and poor and was determined to do something about it," added the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to violate Nijmeijer's family's desire for privacy.