TWO BOMBS DISARMED BEFORE U.S. OFFICIALS ARRIVE

Senator, Ambassador Visit Violence-Ridden Town In Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Police in a violence-ridden Colombian town defused two
bombs a few hours before a visit there Thursday by Sen. Paul Wellstone,
D-Minn., and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, authorities reported Friday.

A Colombian police colonel said the bombs might have been rigged for an
assassination attempt, citing the arrest of a man said to belong to a
leftist guerrilla group hostile to U.S. military aid for the Colombian
government. But other U.S. and Colombian officials said there was no proof
the American visitors were the intended targets.

Wellstone and Patterson, who took up her post three months ago, traveled to
Barrancabermeja, an oil-refining town 150 miles north of Bogota, as part of
Wellstone's visit to review anti-drug activities in Colombia. Leftist
guerrillas and privately funded paramilitary groups have clashed regularly
in and around the city, battling for control of a lucrative drug trade that
is the target of a new U.S. military aid package.

Jose Miguel Villar, a police colonel, said Friday that two powerful,
shrapnel-filled bombs were discovered near a route Wellstone and Patterson
could have taken from the airport to to a brief meeting with human-rights
advocates in what is perhaps Colombia's most dangerous city. The explosives
were rigged to a detonator and police said the man they found in possession
of the bombs was a suspected urban commando of the National Liberation
Army, or ELN, Colombia's second-largest leftist militant group.

But Colombian authorities and the State Department said later Friday that
they could not say if the bombs were intended for Patterson and Wellstone,
but the two U.S. officials moved from the airport to the city center by
helicopter.

"Such explosive devices are frequently found in the area of
Barrancabermeja, an area of extensive activity by illegally armed groups in
Colombia," the U.S. Embassy in Bogota said in a statement.

"We are aware of no indication, no evidence that these explosives were
targeted against the ambassador or the senator," said Philip Reeker, a
State Department spokesman.

Wellstone's visit came as Colombian guerrillas, comprising perhaps 20,000
armed members, wage a violent campaign against the government's $7.5
billion anti-drug program known as Plan Colombia. The United States is
contributing $1.3 billion to the effort, the majority of it to help the
army and national police force eradicate drug crops protected and taxed by
leftist guerrillas and their right-wing paramilitary rivals.

Across the country, particularly in strategic drug-producing crossroads
such as Barrancabermeja, the armed groups have concentrated their numbers
and increased strikes against civilian and military targets in recent
weeks. But the situation is most serious in the south, where Colombia's
largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, has taken over much of the country's richest coca region.

Both the FARC and the ELN, say their tactics are prompted by a U.S.
military package that they say threatens Colombia's independence and could
broaden the long civil war.

While the assassination of senior U.S. officials might weaken American
support of its Colombia policy, Wellstone would make an odd choice for a
target. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the liberal was
part of a small minority that opposed the aid package, arguing that much of
the money should be spent on programs to reduce domestic drug consumption.

He has also argued that the United States should not provide military aid
to the Colombian armed forces because of their poor human rights record, a
charge made repeatedly by the leftist groups. In August, Wellstone
criticized President Clinton's decision to waive human rights restrictions
on the U.S. aid package, saying it "gives the green light to the Colombian
military to continue business as usual."