REBELS IN COLOMBIA WARN U.S. TO AVOID FRONT-LINE COMBAT

BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept. 30 - Marxist rebels have warned American soldiers
based in Colombia that they will be declared a "military target" if they
take any front-line combat role in the nation's long- running war.

"The FARC declares United States soldiers a military target," said the
headline of a statement distributed on Friday on the Internet by the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

The FARC, its Spanish-language acronym, is Latin America's largest and
oldest guerrilla force, with 17,000 soldiers. It has a dominant presence in
roughly 40 percent of Colombia, a country an American military spokesman
described Friday as among the most treacherous places anywhere around the
globe.

Under a $1.3 billion American aid package for Colombia approved by the
Congress in July, lawmakers opened the way for the number of American
advisers in Colombia to be doubled, to about 500 at any one time, to train
special battalions in fighting drugs, and indirectly, guerrillas.

But the package contains a clause that would allow the American president to
lift the cap for 90 days in the event of an "imminent involvement" of United
States forces in hostilities.

The rebel group has branded the aid package, consisting of mostly military
aid, as counterinsurgency assistance thinly disguised as anti-drug aid, and
warned repeatedly of Washington's slide into a military quagmire.

"All Colombian or foreign military personnel in combat zones will be a
military target of the FARC," said the statement, quoting the senior rebel
commander, Andres Paris.

"At the moment, FARC guerrillas do not wish to reveal if there are concrete
plans to attack United States military bases in the country," it said.

But it added that several such bases, where American military personnel are
located, were "very close to regions where guerrillas recently staged
intense combat that caused government forces important casualties."