RAID AIMS AT REBEL LINK TO COCAINE

BARRANCO MINAS, Colombia - Troops making a late-night descent on an
airstrip in the Amazon didn't get the men they were looking for: a
fugitive Brazilian drug lord and the Colombian guerrilla commander who
allegedly sold him cocaine for arms.

But the military said the commando-style operation near the Brazilian
border helped to expose a cocaine-for-guns operation fueling the
country's 37-year war and demonstrating the guerrillas' deepening
involvement in the international drug trade.

Eager to show their commitment to a U.S.-backed drug war, the armed
forces flew journalists and Gen. Peter Pace, the commander of U.S.
military forces in Latin America, into the area Monday.

The military gave the visitors a briefing and a tour of previously
uncharted coca fields and one of the cocaine-processing laboratories
discovered in recent days.

Also on display were Brazilian passports, confiscated cash, seized
satellite phones, and notebooks recording supposed cocaine-for-arms
transactions between Brazilian traffickers and the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Six Brazilians are among the 29 people arrested so far in Operation
Black Cat, launched on Feb. 11. One is said to be the girlfriend of
Luiz Fernando da Costa, a fugitive Brazilian considered one of his
country's top narcotics traffickers.

As of Tuesday, the troops said they'd discovered airstrips, 12
laboratories, deserted rebel camps and 25,000 acres of uncharted coca.
The area was capable of producing 2 tons of cocaine weekly, officials
said.

FARC has admitted to "taxing" peasant farmers who grow coca crops, but
denies it smuggles cocaine or works directly with international drug
traffickers.

U.S. officials, however, have increasingly labeled the group a
"cartel" and Mexico's attorney general has alleged FARC supplied
cocaine to a Mexican syndicate in return for cash and weapons.

The charges are uncomfortable for President Andres Pastrana, who is
trying to negotiate peace with the guerrillas and refuses to
characterize FARC as "narco-traffickers."

Barranco Minas, a tiny village in southern Guainia State, is only 115
miles north of Brazil and about the same distance from Venezuela to
the east. Its proximity to sparsely patrolled borders make the village
an ideal trafficking platform, officials said.

Nineteen illegal drug flights were intercepted in airspace near
Barranco Minas in the past year. Charred pieces of two small planes
destroyed by air force fighters litter the thick woods beside the
village's ample grass airstrip.

The region is a known stronghold of FARC's 16th Front, a unit believed
by the military to be dedicated almost exclusively to generating
drug-related revenues for the 16,000-strong guerrilla army.