KEY ROADS TAKEN FROM REBELS, COLOMBIA SAYS

BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 13 -- A military offensive aimed at breaking a
50-day blockade of a southern province has wrested control of crucial
roads, government officials said today. More than 20 guerrillas died in the
fighting, the officials added.

The fighting erupted as negotiators from the government and the largest
guerrilla group in the country prepared to resume talks on Tuesday in the
demilitarized zone in Caqueta Province that Bogota ceded to the rebels two
years ago. The rebel group is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC.

The fighting in the southern province, Putumayo, adjacent to Caqueta,
picked up last week as the military moved reinforcements to open important
roads leading to the capital, Mocoa, and near Santiago in the northwest,
regions where roadblocks have led to food shortages.

In recent days, hundreds of reinforcements have arrived in Putumayo,
putting a total of 4,000 soldiers in the province, Eduardo Pizano,
President Andres Pastrana's chief of staff, said in an interview on Friday.

Soldiers from the Ninth Brigade are accompanying convoys that have
transported more than 350 tons of food from a city in Huila Province,
Neiva, south into Mocoa. Another brigade from Narino Province beat back a
rebel assault on Friday in Santiago, Mr. Pizano said, adding that the
action let supplies move along an important mountain road.

Yet the blockade has not been lifted to the point where food and other
necessities flow freely, said Francisco Segura, director of the Association
of Municipalities of Putumayo.

And the central government has not declared a victory. "We have the army
there, but a guy can still come out, stop a car, throw a bomb and burn it,"
Mr. Pizano said.

Mr. Pizano said the government was working to ease the shortages by sending
convoys under military escort and airlifting food into Puerto Asis, the
largest city in the province. As of the weekend, more than 1,300 tons had
been delivered in the last month, with three flights a day arriving in
Putumayo.

The roadblocks began on the evening of Sept. 24 in response to attacks by
the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary force that has
been competing with the rebels to control the coca industry in Putumayo.
The province of jungles and farms, which borders Ecuador, is home to more
than half the Colombian coca fields, rendering it a target in the war on
coca trafficking.

Officials said four fronts of the FARC, a force numbering up to 2,000, were
operating in Putumayo. "Obviously this area is an important source of
income for them," Mr. Pizano said, referring to coca. "And they're going to
fight so they don't lose it."

Much of the fighting has been centered on La Hormiga, Orito and San Miguel
in the southern area of Putumayo, a region where Mr. Pizano said an
estimated 86,000 acres were producing coca.