Pubdate: Sat, 27 Oct 2001
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2001 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383
Author: Jared Kotler, The Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

U.S. AID TO BATTLE TERRORISM IN COLOMBIA 'INTENSIFYING'

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The United States will provide Colombia with 
counterterrorist aid -- in addition to military aid to fight drug 
trafficking -- as part of the new global war on terrorism, the U.S. 
ambassador to the South American country said Friday.

Washington plans to train and equip elite anti-kidnapping and bomb squads, 
assist civilian and military counter-terror investigators and help Colombia 
guard its oil pipelines from rebel bomb attacks, Ambassador Anne Patterson 
said.

The new aid would be in addition to a controversial U.S. military plan 
aimed at helping Colombian security forces fight leftist rebels and 
right-wing paramilitaries, who have been embroiled in civil war for 37 years.

Fighting drugs -- a main source of funding for the rebel groups and 
paramilitaries -- would remain the main U.S. focus. But "there's no 
question we are now focusing more on terrorism in Colombia" after the Sept. 
11 attacks on New York and Washington, Patterson said.

Two leftist Colombian rebel groups and a rival rightist paramilitary 
faction are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Patterson said the United Sates had already planned to aid and provide 
intelligence assistance to Colombian anti-kidnapping squads before last 
month's attacks. That plan and other anti-terrorist efforts would now be 
"intensifying," she said.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana and President Bush are scheduled to 
meet in Washington on Nov. 11 to review relations, Foreign Minister 
Guillermo Fernandez de Soto said Friday.

"All of the (Colombian) outlaw groups have to understand that it's not just 
rhetoric that the world changed after Sept. 11," Fernandez de Soto said.

Rebels are responsible for the majority of the more than 3,000 kidnappings 
reportedly annually in Colombia, and have been waging a sabotage campaign 
against oil pipelines. The nation's largest guerrilla group, the 
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has also kidnapped and 
killed U.S. citizens in Colombia.

Washington is also turning up its scrutiny of landowner-backed paramilitary 
groups that are waging a brutal massacre campaign against suspected leftists.

Patterson said the State Department on Friday was to cancel the visas of 
five Colombians believed to be helping finance the paramilitary United 
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.
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