U.S. TO GIVE COLOMBIA COUNTERTERRORISM AID

Military assistance to fight drug trafficking will also be provided.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The United States will provide Colombia with
counterterrorist aid - in addition to military aid to fight drug
trafficking - as part of the new global war on terrorism, the U.S.
ambassador to the South American nation said Friday.

Washington plans to train and equip elite anti-kidnapping and bomb
squads, assist civilian and military counter-terror investigators,
and help Colombia guard its oil pipelines from rebel bomb attacks,
Ambassador Anne Patterson said in an interview.

The new aid would be in addition to a controversial U.S. military
plan aimed at helping Colombian security forces fight leftist rebels
and right-wing paramilitaries, who have been embroiled in civil war
for 37 years.

Fighting drugs - a main source of funding for the rebel groups and
paramilitaries - would remain the main U.S. focus. But "there's no
question we are now focusing more on terrorism in Colombia" after the
Sept. 11 attacks in New York and near Washington, Patterson said.

Two leftist Colombian rebels groups and a rival rightist paramilitary
faction are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist
organizations.

Patterson said the United States had already planned to aid and
provide intelligence assistance to Colombian anti-kidnapping squads
before last month's attacks. That plan and other anti-terrorist
efforts would now be "intensifying," she said.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana and President George W. Bush are
scheduled to meet in Washington on Nov. 11 to review relations.

Rebels are responsible for the majority of the more than 3,000
kidnappings reported annually in Colombia and have been waging a
sabotage campaign against oil pipelines. The nation's largest
guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
has kidnapped and killed U.S. citizens in Colombia.

Washington is also turning up its scrutiny of landowner-backed
paramilitary groups that are waging a brutal massacre campaign
against suspected leftists.

Patterson said the State Department on Friday was to cancel the visas
of five Colombians believed to be helping finance the paramilitary
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

She said the U.S. Embassy has information on at least 45 other
alleged AUC financiers and was checking to see whether any had U.S.
visas.

As part of the counter-terror fight, the U.S. government also is
trying to trace foreign bank accounts managed by the guerrillas and
paramilitaries or their civilian backers, Patterson said.

She said embassy investigators were looking over canceled checks from
a Miami bank account allegedly used to finance the paramilitaries.
The checks were discovered by Colombian troops in a raid this month
near Cali.

Washington's counterdrug aid includes training for Colombian
counternarcotics troops and donations of helicopters and crop dusters
for eradication of drug plantations guarded by rebel and paramilitary
forces.

Earlier this week, Patterson said Washington would seek to extradite
guerrilla and paramilitary members charged in the United States with
drug trafficking and money laundering.