COLOMBIA REBELS COULD BE TARGET IN TERROR WAR U.S. OFFICIALS PUSHING
LINK WITH NARCOTICS TRAFFICKING

BOGOTA, Colombia --When the United States' top drug cop visited
here recently, he traveled in bulletproof vans. Police with
automatic weapons ringed the hotel where he slept. He was warned
that if he left the city limits, he risked being kidnapped by rebels.

In short, Asa Hutchinson, the head of the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), found himself in something akin to a war zone.
This capital city is surrounded by anti-government insurgents who
often finance their civil war with profits from trafficking in
cocaine and heroin.

If Hutchinson and the rest of the Bush administration have their way,
the United States would equate the rebels with international
terrorist groups such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and
include them in the international war on terror.

This would allow the democratically elected Colombian government to
spend the money that Washington sends to fight drugs to fight the
rebels, too.

''There used to be a distinction between drug traffickers and
insurgency groups in Colombia,'' Hutchinson said during his visit in
March.

''Now that the proof is clear that the terrorists are engaged in
trafficking as well, our support for Colombia should recognize that
the traffickers are also terrorists,'' he said.

President Bush has requested sending $538 million in military and
police aid to Colombia in 2003. For this year, Congress authorized
$343 million.

Until now, Congress has seen its relationship with Colombia through
the lens of the drug war. Hutchinson's trip last month became part of
an adminstration campaign that was launched last fall to demonstrate
that Colombia's problems stretch far beyond cocaine and heroin.
Everywhere Hutchinson went and everyone he talked to seem to push the
administration's point that the rebels' tactics are terrorist acts.

''We've had bombs go off,'' a DEA agent based in Bogota told
Hutchinson during a breakfast briefing one day. ''You cannot leave
the city. If you drive north or south, you are going to see a
guerrilla. If they know you're an American, you're going to get
kidnapped.''

Hutchinson visited police officers wounded in gunfights with rebels
who were running drugs. He met widows of Colombian police officers
who had died at rebel hands while gathering intelligence on drug
smugglers.

The Colombian National Police showed him a video of the dismantling
of a drug lab run by rebels. They recounted stories of abductions,
car bombs and sabotage, all of which they said were linked to rebel
groups.

President Andres Pastrana, who had refrained from calling the
insurgents terrorists until peace negotiations broke down on Feb. 20,
told Hutchinson straight out on March 26 that ''narco-trafficking is
financing the violence and the terrorism in Colombia.''

Three insurgency groups in Colombia are on the State Department's
list of foreign terrorist organizations. Most powerful is the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist group known by its
Spanish initials FARC. On Monday, government officials say the FARC
abducted a state governor and a former defense minister from a peace
march. FARC rebels also hold hostage presidential candidate Ingrid
Betancourt and 12 state lawmakers they kidnapped during recent
attacks.

The Colombian government also contends with attacks from the National
Liberation Army, a leftist group known as the ELN, and the United
Self-Defense Forces, a right-wing paramilitary group.

U.S. authorities say all three groups are involved in the drug trade.

Government figures released in March indicated that coca leaf
cultivation, grown primarily in areas where the government has lost
control to the rebel groups, reached an all-time high in 2001. Much
of the drug is bound for the USA.

The administration launched its campaign to redirect aid from
fighting the drug war to the broader war against the rebels last
fall. Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, began calling
the rebels a threat to hemispheric security. Hutchinson began
referring to them as ''narco-terrorists'' in his public
pronouncements. The National Drug Control Strategy issued by the
White House in February listed Colombia, along with Afghanistan, as a
place where illegal drug profits fund terrorism.

In March, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued the first indictments
against FARC guerrillas for shipping cocaine into the USA.

In the same month, Secretary of State Colin Powell asked Congress to
give the Bush administration authority and money to ''deal with the
counterterrorist aspects of the fight that the Colombian people are
waging against terrorist organizations.''