TURMOIL IN COLOMBIA'S PARAMILITARY

Hard-Liner Likely To Be Their New Leader

BOGOTA, Colombia - A hard-liner from northern Colombia's cattle
country is emerging as the likely new leader of the country's brutal
right-wing paramilitary forces.

Although he has not yet accepted the position, Salvatore Mancuso is
already considered the new boss of the United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia, or AUC. That word came from former AUC commander Carlos
Castano, in an editorial posted yesterday on the group's Internet site.

"We in the AUC are already addressing him as Commander General," wrote
Castano, the group's longtime leader who stepped down in May to manage
its political affairs.

The change could herald an even more combative posture by the AUC - a
group that has committed hundreds of massacres and recently was placed
on a U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations.

The news also comes as a visiting high-level delegation from
Washington tries to chart a course for the Bush administration in this
South American country plagued by drug trafficking and a 37-year civil
war.

The persistent violence continued the army said yesterday. Fighting
and rebel attacks around the country killed 28 guerrillas and five
members of the security forces. And, a car bombing killed a police
officer in Sativanorte, 130 miles north of Bogota.

While the U.S. group headed by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman
toured military bases yesterday, President Andres Pastrana said the
Americans had expressed "very clear" support for peace talks and his
Plan Colombia drug-fighting initiative.

Under last year's $1.3 billion aid package, Washington provides
helicopters, troop training and crop-spraying aircraft in an effort to
eradicate illegal drug crops that are guarded and taxed by armed
guerrillas and paramilitaries.

Human rights groups charge Washington could be fueling the AUC's
counterinsurgency campaign through its growing military aid. High-
ranking military officers have been accused of tolerance and
complicity with the paramilitaries, and some AUC officers are U.S.-
trained former soldiers.

Castano is a former army scout whose father was kidnapped and killed
by guerrillas. His resignation was seen as a move to distance himself
from some of group's atrocities and as a concession to harder-line
sectors inside the AUC represented by Mancuso.

At the time, some skeptics speculated that Castano would remain in
control of the organization even though he was stepping out of the
limelight. The group's secretive nature makes it difficult to know how
much power he still wields.

The 8,000-strong nationwide militia has generally not turned its guns
on government forces. But following a recent government raid on his
wife's residence and those of dozens of suspected AUC financiers,
Mancuso was reportedly urging retaliation.

Prosecutors' agents shot and killed a Mancuso family chauffeur in the
May crackdown in his home town of Monteria, a pro-paramilitary
ranching town in northern Cordoba state.

Mancuso - the son of Italian immigrants - was unknown to most
Colombians until his name appeared as a member of a nine-man
collective leadership council announced at the time of Castano's
resignation. He is remembered around Monteria as a motocross
enthusiast who came from an upper middle-class family that owned an
imported-car dealership.

While naming Mancuso as the AUC's likely new chief, Castano said the
group now operates as a "decentralized confederation" in which each
commander takes responsibility for his own fighters' actions.

Castano acknowledged the group had committed "military excesses" in
the past, but said it remained determined to eliminate Colombia's
guerrillas.