Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 Source: CNN.com (US Web) Copyright: 2000 Cable News Network, Inc. Contact: http://cnn.com/feedback/ Website: http://www.cnn.com/ Forum: http://community.cnn.com/ COLOMBIA SEIZES COCAINE IT LINKS TO PARAMILITARIES BOGOTA (Reuters) -- Colombian police seized more than 3,270 pounds of pure cocaine Tuesday, saying it was apparently earmarked to help bankroll the activities of Colombia's main right-wing paramilitary group. The multimillion-dollar haul was thought to be one of the first directly linked to the outlawed United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the ruthless militia force headed by paramilitary chieftain Carlos Castano. "This is a blow from the police to the Self-Defense Forces," Gen. Alfredo Salgado, deputy national police chief, told reporters. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, cocaine sells for up to $36,000 per kilo (2.2 pounds) wholesale in the United States, meaning that Tuesday's haul could have been worth more than $53 million. Castano, a former army guide, is considered to have unified Colombia's disparate paramilitary groups under the umbrella of the Self-Defense Forces in early 1997. He has been accused of being a major drug trafficker, shipping out cocaine along the same clandestine routes used for arms smuggling. Local and international human rights groups say his 7,000-member group, which they blame for most of the peasant massacres and other atrocities committed in Colombia, has close links with the military. Col. Gentil Vidal, the National Police commander in the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, said the consignment of cocaine was discovered in a house near Buenaventura, the leading port on Colombia's Pacific coast. Six paramilitary gunmen guarding the shipment were arrested, and a small cache of U.S.- and Russian-made assault rifles, grenades and bulletproof vests was seized, Vidal told Reuters. He said the cocaine had been packaged for shipment abroad and the arrested men all worked under Castano, who admitted in a television interview in March that the drug trade was a leading source of financing for his group. Like the Marxist-led Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) -- the hemisphere's largest surviving 1960s guerrilla army -- the Self-Defense Forces deny playing a direct role in drug trafficking. But Castano says they collect "taxes" and protection money from drug lords and peasants cultivating illicit drug crops in areas under their control. Colombia supplies an estimated 80 percent of the world's cocaine and is a leading source of the heroin sold on U.S. streets. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart