26 COLOMBIAN GUERRILLAS SAID KILLED

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Anti-drug troops fought with leftist rebels in
Colombia's chief cocaine-producing province in one of several weekend
clashes that left 26 guerrillas dead, the army said Monday.

Authorities also announced the arrests of two suspects in what they said
was a plot by the country's right-wing paramilitaries to assassinate
President Andres Pastrana last July. The paramilitaries oppose Pastrana's
efforts to make peace with the rebels.

Soldiers trained under a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package were among the
government troops in a battle against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, in the southern state of Putumayo on Sunday, an army
spokesman said. Eight guerillas were killed.

Government forces killed 15 other FARC members in towns across Cundinamarca
state, which includes the capital, Bogota, and three guerrillas died in
clashes elsewhere, the army said. No army casualties were reported.

Putumayo, bordering Ecuador, is Colombia's largest source of coca, the raw
material for cocaine. The FARC taxes and protects drug laboratories and
coca plantations in the area.

Washington insists its aid is meant to fight drugs, not rebels, but U.S.
officials consider any rebel units involved in the drug trade a legitimate
target for U.S.-trained troops. U.S. Special Forces trainers have
instructed some 3,000 anti-drug troops based in southern Colombia.

The rebel deaths were the latest in Colombia's 37-year war, which kills
some 3,500 people every year, most of them civilians. The war pits the FARC
and other leftist guerrillas against government forces and rightist
paramilitaries with clandestine ties to the military.

German Jaramillo, director of the secret police, or DAS, said late Monday
that two men were arrested over the weekend in connection with a
paramilitary plot to kill Pastrana in the town of Armenia, 110 miles west
of the capital. He did not name the suspects.

Pastrana was planning to travel to Armenia on July 31 to attend a ceremony
presenting houses to victims of a 1999 earthquake, but the trip was
canceled at the insistence of security officials, Jaramillo said. His
statement was the first time authorities revealed the alleged plot.

The paramilitary United Self-Defense Force, or AUC, is particularly
critical of his 1998 decision to cede a Switzerland-sized territory in
southern Colombia to the FARC in a bid to jump-start stalled peace talks.