Colombian Deal With Rebels Is Vexing U.S.

WASHINGTON Bush administration officials are voicing rising impatience
with the concessions President Andres Pastrana of Colombia has granted to
leftist rebels in his country. The officials say that a large swath of
territory ceded to the guerrillas is being used to train terrorists, run
prison camps and traffic in drugs.

Although public statements have been supportive of President Pastrana, a
top State Department official, Marc Grossman, who is planning a
fact-finding trip to Colombia next week, will discuss these concerns,
officials said today.

The suspension of peace talks this month with the second largest rebel
group, the National Liberation Army, has left the administration persuaded
that "there is no reason to believe there will be any substantive agreement
with either of the groups in the near term," a senior official said.

The Americans expressed concern that the leading rebel group, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is using a
Switzerland-sized swath of territory it controls to learn bomb-making
techniques from the Irish Republican Army and to operate dismal mobile
prisons for captured police officers and other enemies.

Mr. Pastrana ceded the demilitarized zone, known is Spanish as the despeje,
to the FARC as a peace gesture in 1998. "The despeje is being badly
misused," the senior official said.

Mr. Pastrana's government has received nearly $1 billion in mostly military
aid from Washington, and stands to take in hundreds of millions more.

Mr. Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs, will lead
a delegation to Colombia that will stop first in Mexico before arriving in
Colombia on Aug. 29, officials said. He will be accompanied by officials
responsible for national security, drugs, development projects and
justice-related issues.

Officials said Mr. Grossman would raise American concerns that concessions
to the guerrillas have proved fruitless and undercut President Pastrana's
leverage in peace talks, officials said.

Mr. Pastrana took office in 1998 pledging to bring peace. He now has just a
year remaining in office and must decide in October whether to renew the
demilitarized zone.

Colombian officials said he is likely to do so, so as not to deal a mortal
blow to peace negotiations. They voiced hopes that military operations
under way in the jungle regions of Meta and Guaviare would strengthen their
leverage in future talks. The zone, in addition to other territory held by
the guerrillas , has left the FARC in control of about 90,000 civilians,
and Mr. Pastrana is facing mounting domestic and international pressure to
act against rebel abuses there.

Administration officials expressed particular outrage this week at the
arrest of three men suspected of being members of the Irish Republican Army
on charges that they were training FARC rebels in urban warfare tactics.
According to the Colombian police, the men, who included the Havana-based
representative of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political arm, spent six weeks
this summer training rebels in the demilitarized zone.

"No one should be in doubt about the seriousness with which we take such
charges," said a State Department spokesman, Philip Reeker. "Any
collaboration with the FARC by an individual or organization is of utmost
concern to us."

The three men -- Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan -- were
formally charged this week, though American officials said the evidence
against them, including residue from explosives, was probably insufficient
to convict them.

Cuban authorities said Mr. Connolly has been Sinn Fein's representative for
Latin America; administration officials said they have nothing to indicate
Cuban complicity in the reported I.R.A. training.

Administration officials said the suspected I.R.A. link suggests that the
FARC rebels are preparing to step up attacks on Colombian cities.

The policy makers also cited testimony from several Colombian police
officers that the rebels are operating prison camps inside the
demilitarized zone. A cable from the American Embassy in Bogota, which was
provided to The New York Times, recounted the travails of four policemen
who had been held by the guerrillas for nearly three years before their
release in June.

It said that the officers, along with dozens of their colleagues, were
bound by the wrist and neck, underwent forced marches, received meager
rations, were confined to sweltering makeshift cells, were denied medical
attention and were repeatedly threatened with death.