TOP U.S. ARMY OFFICER OBSERVES COLOMBIA DRUG RAID

BARRANCOMINAS, Colombia Stepping into guerrilla-infested jungles, a top
U.S. army officer walked on Monday through waist-high coca fields and
toured a cocaine laboratory confiscated by Colombia's armed forces from the
country's largest rebel force.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace of the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command paid a
one-day visit to Colombia - the world's No. 1 cocaine producer - to observe
anti-drug efforts by the Colombian army.

As part of President Andres Pastrana's "Plan Colombia," the United States
is investing $1 billion in mostly military aid to help destroy hundreds of
thousands of acres (hectares) of coca fields fueling the South American
nation's 37-year old war.

Although Pace's trip to the jungle encampment of Barrancominas, in the
southeastern Guainia district, bordering Brazil, was not part of the
U.S.-backed offensive, it underscored the United States' growing
involvement in Colombia's drug wars.

Critics of Washington's aid, which includes the delivery of 14 Blackhawks
helicopters to deploy Colombian drug battalions, say it could end up
dragging the United States into a war that has killed more than 35,000
civilians in the last 10 years.

Washington has insisted the money is needed to destroy a booming drug trade
that brings millions of dollars every year to the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), the hemisphere's largest and most powerful
guerrilla force.

It has also said no Americans will take part in field operations.

Colombia's war pits rebel groups against the army and outlawed right-wing
paramilitary squads.

Operation "Black Cat"

On Monday, Pace -- accompanied by Colombia's Defense Minister Luis Fernando
Ramirez and Armed Forces chief Gen. Fernando Tapias - flew over a key
strategic area used by FARC guerrillas to smuggle arms for drugs.

Some 1,000 members of Colombia's army, backed by airplanes and helicopters,
took part on Sunday in Operation "Black Cat," which ended with the capture
of 12 cocaine laboratories, a FARC camp with a capacity for up to 500
fighters and 10,000 hectares of coca fields -- the raw material for cocaine.

Twenty-two drug-traffickers were arrested in Sunday's raid, which Colombian
narcotics officials described as one of the biggest blows against the
FARC's war economy in eastern Colombia.

"It has been very clear to me for a long time that there are members of the
FARC, the ELN and the paramilitaries that have links to drug-trafficking,"
Pace said through a translator. He was referring to the country's
second-largest rebel force, the National Liberation Army (ELN).

The FARC has blasted the U.S. military aid as "gringo imperialism" and has
said coca leaf should be removed by hand through government-funded crop
substitution programs.

On Feb. 9, the 17,000-strong FARC ended a tense three-month stalemate and
returned to two-year-old peace talks after Pastrana repeated assurances of
a crackdown on the paramilitaries, the rebels' bitter enemies.

Rights monitors accuse the 8,000-strong paramilitaries of links to the army
and of killing scores of suspected leftist collaborators as part of a
"dirty war" against rebels.