Pubdate: Sat, 15 Feb 2003
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Juan Forero

AMERICANS AMONG 2 KILLED AND 3 MISSING IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 14 - An American working for the United States 
government and a Colombian soldier were shot dead after their small plane 
crash landed on Thursday in a region of southern Colombia dominated by 
guerrillas, Colombian and American officials said tonight. The rebels are 
believed to have then made off with three other Americans who had also been 
aboard the United States government plane when engine failure forced it down.

Colombian military helicopters, reconnaissance aircraft, counterinsurgency 
troops and American rescue specialists immediately undertook a large-scale 
search operation across a swath of jungle in isolated, lawless Caqueta 
Province in southern Colombia. But by early this evening, little was known 
about the fate of the three Americans who were believed to have been taken 
prisoner. At least four soldiers searching the area for survivors were 
wounded by land mines, and Colombian television reported skirmishes between 
troops and rebel fighters.

American officials declined either to reveal the identities of the four 
Americans on board the plane or to discuss what agency they were working 
for. But officials in Washington familiar with the circumstances of the 
crash said they were not working for the Drug Enforcement Administration or 
the Central Intelligence Agency, nor were they employees of the embassy.

The kidnappings of the Americans, if confirmed, would be the first of 
Americans working for the United States government in Colombia, which is 
engaged in a 39-year-old civil conflict with leftist rebels. In recent 
years, the rebels have declared American forces to be legitimate military 
targets but had yet to carry out their threats.

"We anticipated this," said a senior Congressional aide in Washington 
involved in shaping policy on Colombia. "We've increased our presence and 
this is something you envision when you go down there to help this democracy."

Colombian military officials said the Americans, flying aboard a plane used 
in counter-drug operations, were probably taken away by the battle-hardened 
Teofilo Forero unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, 
Colombia's largest and most belligerent rebel group. The single-engine 
Cessna 208 crashed after suffering engine trouble, but officials here and 
in Washington said the rebels probably took quick advantage, surrounding 
the aircraft and taking the occupants hostage.

The rebels did not take immediate responsibility for the kidnappings, but 
in radio communications intercepted after the crash the guerrillas were 
heard to say, "We have them, we have them."

Meanwhile, the rebels were accused of detonating a house full of explosives 
during a police raid today in the southern city of Neiva, just north of 
where the American plane crashed. At least 15 people were killed by the 
explosives, which the police said the rebels were planning to use in an 
assassination attempt on Saturday during a visit to Neiva by President 
alvaro Uribe.

On Feb. 7, the rebel group set off a 330-pound bomb in an exclusive Bogota 
club, killing 33 people.

Colombian military officials said the Americans were on an intelligence 
mission in the remote region, which consists of jungles interspersed with 
cattle pastures.

"These are planes that help us to identify information that is useful for 
the Colombian government," Colombia's defense minister, Martha Lucia 
Ramirez, said. "They are helping in intelligence work that for the 
government is very important."

The plane and its occupants - a pilot, a co-pilot and three passengers - 
had left Bogota about 7:20 a.m. on Thursday. Shortly before 9 a.m., it 
experienced engine trouble a few miles west of the town of Puerto Rico, 
American officials said.

The pilot veered south, presumably in an effort to land in the provincial 
capital of Florencia, according to American officials. The plane, however, 
crash landed in a region long dominated by the the rebels. Indeed, the 
crash site is on the edge of a huge swath that Colombia's previous 
president, Andres Pastrana, ceded to the the rebels in 1998 for peace talks 
that fell apart last year.

Colombian search-and-rescue teams immediately lifted off in Black Hawk 
helicopters from the Larandia military base nearby and quickly found the 
charred wreckage, along with two bodies, Colombian and American officials said.

Colombian military officials said the two men appeared to have been shot 
execution-style, but American officials said they might have been killed in 
a gunfight. Early this evening, the State Department said the bodies of the 
American and Colombian were recovered and transferred to the Larandia 
military base for identification and to determine the cause of death.

In comments to reporters, President Uribe lamented what he called the 
deaths of two people "whose assassinations have been confirmed in the south 
of the country."

Analysts here said they believed that the rebels, if they decided to hold 
the Americans, might use them as leverage to prod the government of 
President Uribe into a broader prisoner exchange. The rebels are holding 
dozens of Colombian soldiers and several politicians, among them a former 
presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt. She was kidnapped on a road in 
the same general area as yesterday's plane crash.

"Before, when they held Americans they were civilians, with no ties to the 
government," said Alfredo Rangel, a military analyst who has advised the 
Colombian Defense Ministry. "Now there could be a different purpose, which 
would be the prisoner exchange, which is political, and that could further 
involve the United States government."

Washington has in recent years made Caqueta and an adjacent province, 
Putumayo, the epicenter of the war on drugs, funneling $2 billion since 
1997 to mostly pay for helicopters, aircraft and other equipment used to 
fumigate vast swaths of coca fields. The efforts have destroyed tens of 
thousands of hectares of coca, depriving the FARC of millions of dollars it 
draws from taxing the coca trade.

In defense, rebels and drug traffickers often fire automatic weapons at 
crop dusters, in isolated cases killing Colombian or other foreign pilots. 
Three Americans have been killed -- one in 1997 and two in 1998 -- when 
they lost control of their aircraft.

The United States military lost five servicemen in July of 1999 when a De 
Havilland RC-7 reconnaissance aircraft crashed into a mountain during a 
counter-narcotics mission. They are considered the first American military 
personnel killed in Colombia's drug war.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D