COLOMBIA GIVES MILITARY FREER HAND

Critics See Threat To Human Rights

BOGOTA - The Colombian government announced yesterday that President Andres
Pastrana has signed legislation giving the military broad new powers to
wage war with less scrutiny from civilian human-rights monitors, a measure
that some US lawmakers have warned could threaten a key US aid package.

The measure is designed to give the military more latitude in fighting a
growing guerrilla insurgency that dominates large parts of Colombia's rural
landscape. Human-rights groups condemned Pastrana for signing a law they
say will lead to fresh abuses.

Through its $1.3 billion aid package, the United States has been a strong
supporter of the Colombian military, even as it has insisted that Colombian
troops receive human-rights training. Most of the US aid package will
arrive in the form of transport helicopters and military trainers, designed
to help the Colombian military attack a drug trade that helps finance two
leftist guerrilla armies and a paramilitary force that battles them.

The measure is the first substantive reform of Colombia's national security
law since 1965, a year after the two major leftist guerrilla groups were
formed.

''Without a doubt, there needed to be a clarification of the hierarchy of
the command, of the roles of the armed forces and the civilian
population,'' said Senator German Vargas, who introduced the bill in the
Senate. ''This is going to allow us a variety of ways to combat terrorism.''

In broad terms, the measure allows the military to supersede civilian rule
in areas that the president declares ''theaters of operation'' and reduces
the chance that Colombian Army troops could be subjected to thorough
human-rights investigations by civilian agencies.

In its original form, the measure would have allowed the military to
investigate all human-rights charges against it. But the final version
gives the government's ombudsman a role in such cases.

Many of the law's most controversial provisions, approved by the Senate but
watered down in the House, were dropped from the final version.

Since the law passed in July, US lawmakers including Senator Patrick Leahy,
Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee
for foreign operations, have told Pastrana that further aid payments could
be threatened if he signed the bill. About 75 percent of the aid package
has been disbursed so far.

Pastrana signed the measure without fanfare Monday. His government
announced that he had done so as the final item on its daily news briefing
yesterday.

But the final version of the bill was apparently watered down enough for
the US State Department.

''As far as we're concerned, this legislation is much improved over the
original version,'' said a US State Department official.