SPAIN ENLISTS COLOMBIAN POLICE TO QUELL DRUG WAR

Spain has called in Colombian police officers to help curb an outbreak of
violence in Madrid after seven people were killed in eight days, in street
shoot-outs and revenge attacks among international drug traffickers. The
Colombian police, hardened by years of war between cocaine cartels in their
country, were drafted in after the latest gun battle, which saw three
people killed and one injured on Tuesday night.

All the victims were young Colombian men. One of them, a 25-year-old from
the cocaine capital of Medellin, had only been in Spain for two weeks.

Police said they believed the gun battle was between two gangs of
Colombians who were fighting for control of a share of the drug trade in
Madrid.

The two groups had met for talks in a telephone bureau when they started
arguing and threatening each other.

Witnesses said the shoot-out was like a Hollywood film. "They were running
down either side of the street, taking shots at one another across the
traffic," said a neighbour who saw one of the victims gunned down. "It
sounded like the wild west," said another.

Police found 25 spent cartridges at the scene.

The gun battle came only seven days after another three Colombians were
killed in a Madrid apartment. The victims were all shot once in the head,
in what appeared to have been a cold-blooded, professional execution.

Seven other Colombians have been murdered so far this year in the Spanish
capital, leading to concern that the wars fought so ruthlessly in Medellin,
Bogota and Cali have now come to Madrid.

Other cities, such as Barcelona, have also had an increase in the number of
murdered Colombians.

"The Colombian criminals attach little value to life and bring their
attitudes with them," Juan Cotino, Spain's director general of police, said
after Tuesday's deaths.

A number of Colombian police officers will travel to Madrid from Bogota,
police sources said. Among other things, they will be used to identify
professional Colombian hit men who enter Spain and stay just long enough to
carry out a contract killing.

"They have money, false documents and extremely cold blood," one police
source said yesterday.

The killings have led to renewed calls for stricter controls on Colombians
entering Spain. They coincide with a sharp rise in the number of legal
Colombian immigrants who have come to Spain looking for work and escape
from the violence in their country. Immigrants' groups estimate that there
are 60,000 Colombians here.

Spain has long been seen as the main entry point for cocaine in Europe -
although this has normally been distributed by Spanish groups based in the
north-western region of Galicia. Police said there was no evidence that
Colombians played a greater part in the distribution.

All the other countries in Europe's Schengen zone - those states that
agreed to abolish border controls - now require Colombians to obtain visas.
But Spain has refused to apply similar measures, saying they would
contravene a 60-year-old treaty with Colombia that allows visits to either
country of up to three months without a visa.

When the Spanish government of Jose Maria Aznar threatened to introduce
restrictions earlier this year it provoked the ire of the Nobel
prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a group of Colombian
intellectuals, who said they would never set foot in the country again.

Spanish officials, however, expect visa restrictions to be introduced soon.