COLOMBIA MILITIA ENJOYS SUPPORT

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Rightist militias waging a dirty war against
suspected leftists in Colombia enjoy growing support from private
businessmen, the nation's top paramilitary leader said Wednesday.

Carlos Castano, commander of the national paramilitary umbrella
organization known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC,
made the unusually frank admission in a letter to a senate committee.

Castano did not name any of his alleged secret backers by name. He claimed,
however, that his 6,000-strong militias count on the ``growing support'' of
local and international enterprises fed up with leftist guerrillas.

``We have always said we are defenders of free enterprise,'' read the
two-page letter, faxed to local media, adding: ``How could national and
international companies whose investments are constrained by the terrorism
and barbarity of guerrillas...not support us?''

That some landowners and businesses in Colombia provide support to
paramilitary groups has been widely assumed, although little is publicly
known about those relationships.

The militias arose during the 1980s as private armies formed by landowners
and drug traffickers to combat guerrilla extortion and kidnappings. They
have expanded rapidly in recent years and now challenge leftist rebels for
control over large drug-producing regions.

Colombian prosecutors and human rights groups have documented ties between
members of the military and the paramilitary groups, who routinely massacre
civilians suspected of having rebel sympathies.

A $1.3 billion U.S. anti-narcotics aid package heading to Colombia later
this year is conditioned on government progress in reigning in the outlaw
militias and severing their army connections.

Fernando Devis, president of the Society of Colombian Agriculturalists -- a
powerful farmers' lobby -- confirmed that some landowners have thrown their
support behind the illegal militias because the government is unable to
provide security in rural areas.

``This absurd war we are in has led people to have to contract
paramilitaries, self-defense groups or private security systems in order to
defend themselves,'' Devis told local Radionet Radio.