OUTGUNNED REBELS DEVASTATE COLOMBIAN TROOPS

President Says Peace Talks Will Continue Despite Attack

BOGOTA, Colombia -- In a devastating blow to the Colombian military, 54
soldiers and police were killed during fierce combat with Marxist rebels in
northern Colombia, government officials said Friday.

Another 17 police officers were feared dead or taken prisoner.

President Andres Pastrana expressed "profound sadness" at the bloodshed and
called the victims heroes.

But he also said that peace talks with the nation's largest guerrilla
organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, would
continue, despite its attack this week on Dabeiba, about 200 miles
northwest of the capital of Bogota.

Army troops on Friday regained control of the town.

"Colombia will not be intimidated nor will it back down" in the face of the
guerrilla attacks, Pastrana said Friday. "We will not give up on the dream
of a better world just because of some machine-gun fire."

Still, the loss of life on Wednesday and Thursday came as a startling
setback for the Colombian army -- the worst since FARC rebels routed an
elite counterinsurgency battalion in 1998, killing 63 troops and kidnapping 43.

Among those killed this week were 18 army troops and four crew members
aboard a U.S.-made Black Hawk helicopter gunship. The chopper crashed
Thursday while ferrying reinforcements to Dabeiba.

As many as 800 FARC guerrillas attacked the town Wednesday.

The army initially called the crash an accident because of winds that
slammed the helicopter's tail into the ground. But army chief Jorge Mora,
while still not ruling out an accident, said that rebel fire may have
disabled the pilot as he was trying to land.

When army units in the area responded to the crash, 30 more soldiers were
killed in clashes with the guerrillas, said Gen. Gabriel Contreras,
commander of the army's 1st Division.

In addition, two police officers were killed during the FARC's 40-hour
siege of Dabeiba.

The guerrillas attacked the town with grenades, rockets and homemade bombs,
leveling the police station and severely damaging the town hall, a school
and a cathedral.

"It was horrible," Francisco Oquendo, the Roman Catholic priest in Dabeiba,
told reporters. "They destroyed everything in one night -- the priest's
residence, the church and much of the town itself."

Dabeiba is located in northern Antioquia state near the Panamanian border,
considered a strategic corridor for arms and drug trafficking.

The army and illegal right-wing paramilitary organizations had pushed the
FARC, which earns millions of dollars annually by taxing and protecting
narcotics traffickers, out of the region in recent years.

According to Contreras, this week's attack on Dabeiba was part of a
guerrilla strategy to retake control of the zone.

The fighting marked the third time that the FARC has attacked Dabeiba in
the past two years.

"We are in the midst of a war that makes no sense," Dabeiba Mayor Antonio
Varela told Caracol Radio of Bogota.

In recent days, the guerrillas also have attacked Bagado, 110 miles south
of Dabeiba. More than a dozen police officers there have been reported missing.

Farther south, FARC units continue to battle paramilitaries in the
drug-producing state of Putumayo. Two weeks ago, the Colombian government
began airlifting food and medicine to the state.

The government began peace negotiations with the FARC nearly two years ago
in an effort to end a 36-year civil war.

Although the 130,000-troop Colombian army has improved its combat
performance in the past two years, it is widely considered to be too small
and poorly trained to defeat the FARC, which has as many as 17,000 fighters.

Washington, however, is making a huge effort to prop up the Colombian army,
which will receive the bulk of an $862 million U.S. aid package, approved
by Congress last summer.

The aid includes 60 new helicopters, including 18 Black Hawks, which cost
up to $12 million each and are considered a key weapon in the war against
guerrillas and drug traffickers.

The helicopter that crashed on Thursday was one of 15 Black Hawks that the
Colombian army had purchased earlier from the United States.