COLOMBIA REBEL UNAWARE BRAZILIAN WAS DRUG LORD

REBEL ENCLAVE, Colombia (Reuters) - A fugitive Colombian leftist
rebel accused by the army of overseeing a massive cocaine-for-arms
deal said he had chatted with Brazil's top drug lord twice but had
not realized he was a trafficker.

In a recent interview deep inside a demilitarized enclave in southern
Colombia controlled by the 17,000-strong Marxist FARC, Tomas Medina
- -- known as ``Black Man Acacio'' -- acknowledged that he had met drug
lord Luis Fernando Da Costa.

Colombia's army hunted down Da Costa -- alias ``Fernandinho'' -- in
April after sending in 1,000 men backed by helicopters into the
jungles of eastern Colombia in February. The army said ''Operation
Black Cat'' destroyed 20 cocaine laboratories operated by the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known by the Spanish
initials FARC.

It accused Medina of supplying Da Costa with about a fifth of all the
world's cocaine in return for weapons. Medina fled, but Da Costa was
extradited to Brazil, despite his claims to be an innocent cattle
rancher.

The FARC rebel denied the Marxist force was involved in drug
trafficking. But he said the FARC do extract ``taxes'' from the drug
business, which is supplied by thousands of poor peasant growers
cultivating cocaine's raw material -- coca leaf -- in remote parts of
the war-torn nation's rough geography.

He said he had met Da Costa in the small jungle town of
Barrancominas, which Medina's FARC force controlled, but that he had
no idea the man was Brazil's most wanted drug lord.

Fernandinho's planes regularly flew out of Barrancominas packed with
cocaine, the army and witnesses said. Local people said they knew the
wealthy Brazilian was a drug boss.

``I had chats on a couple of occasions with Fernandinho, but I never
knew he was a drug trafficker,'' Medina told Reuters.

``We buy arms, but pay with pesos, not cocaine. As I say, if we were
doing that we wouldn't be in the conditions we are in now, we would
have more sophisticated weapons.''

Medina, who has seldom given interviews, said he was a dedicated
guerrilla fighter committed to social change.

U.S. Says FARC Heavily Into Cocaine

``I'm a commander and I command a guerrilla front, not drug
traffickers,'' said the genial, athletically built man, who said he
was 36 and joined the FARC in 1982.

Colombian prosecutors in April ordered Medina's arrest for drug
trafficking. U.S. authorities believe the FARC is heavily involved in
the drug trade, and that the rebels deliver cocaine in border areas
to traffickers who take it out of the country.

But President Andres Pastrana, who is keen to preserve peace talks
with the FARC, says he does not consider the rebels to be
traffickers. Talks aim to end a 37-year-old war which has claimed
40,000 mainly civilian lives in the past decade.

``We charge taxes and are present in areas where there are drug
traffickers and coca. But we've never been drug traffickers,'' Medina
said, adding ``We have no laboratories.''

But local officials in one coca-growing area -- Putumayo -- have told
Reuters that the FARC buys coca for processing.

``If they've seen me sending, for example, a kilo to the United
States, well, then they should at least have a photo, some proof. But
they don't,'' Medina said.

Medina said he commanded the FARC's 16th Front, part of its Eastern
Bloc, and that he had control of 400-500 fighters. He said he was a
poor peasant before joining Latin America's largest insurgency to
fight for social justice.

The government accuses the FARC of recruiting child soldiers and
attacks on police stations in which hundreds of civilians have died.
The army says the FARC has swapped Marxism for hard-nosed business
sense devoted to kidnapping and drugs.

Medina said he did not know how much drug tax income the FARC
received. He laughed over army claims he had been killed or gravely
wounded during Black Cat and accused the security forces of killing
and torturing peasants during the operation.