COLOMBIAN REBELS GROW IN DEFIANCE

Group Flaunts Tactics On Eve Of Clinton Visit

LOS POZOS, Colombia -- It barely registers as a speck on the map, but Los
Pozos and its fatigue-clad occupants almost certainly will loom large on
President Clinton's agenda when he arrives in Colombia on Wednesday.

Los Pozos is headquarters of the richest and most powerful guerrilla group
in Latin America, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Leaders of the 17,000-member guerrilla group are dedicated to the violent
overthrow of President Andres Pastrana's government and are openly defying
the United States to try to stop them.

In interviews, FARC leaders acknowledged that they will continue to use
money from illicit drugs to finance their escalating war against Colombia's
U.S.-backed government. And given the steady buildup of American military
might in Colombia, they said, it is only a matter of time before they will
train their gunsights on U.S. troops.

"This confrontation is inevitable," said Andres Paris, spokesman for the
FARC leadership. "But we are making efforts to avoid it."

He confirmed that the FARC is shopping on international arms markets to get
more sophisticated weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, in response
to a planned buildup of U.S. military hardware.

In recent weeks, the FARC has staged high-profile attacks on towns across
the country, coinciding with approval in Washington of a $1.3 billion
package of mostly military aid to Colombia. The guerrilla attacks have
appeared to defy a peace process that has yielded only minuscule progress
since Mr. Pastrana initiated it 19 months ago.

Polls suggest overwhelming public approval for an increased U.S. military
role in Colombia, largely because of the widespread perception of the FARC
as uncompromising and increasingly aggressive in its pursuit of funding for
its military campaign.

Critics, including Western diplomats, say the FARC has yielded no ground in
the peace talks despite many government concessions, including
establishment of a Switzerland-size haven where FARC forces can mass
without threat of attack.

The Colombian military says that there is new evidence that the FARC is
building clandestine airstrips within the haven and that the guerrillas are
using the zone to lodge kidnapping victims while their families come up
with ransom payments.

As confusing as their practices and strategies might seem to outsiders,
FARC leaders say there is a logic behind it all. They are trying to explain
the rationale for their actions in anticipation of the public-relations
onslaught they expect from Mr. Clinton's visit.

Mr. Paris and other guerrilla leaders said they expect that they will be
portrayed during Mr. Clinton's visit as the villains behind Colombia's drug
trade and that Washington will use the drug war as an excuse to strike at
the FARC militarily.

"The political decision of the United States is to seek a military solution
to this conflict as well as the problem of illicit cultivation," Mr. Paris
said.

"This is just a big stage production in the theater of interventionism. It
will end with a massive presence of U.S. forces in the zone of combat," he
added. "It is not for the eradication of illicit cultivation, but rather
for the eradication of the guerrillas."

U.S. officials insist that the aid package targets drug production and is
not a step toward a major U.S. military involvement.

President Clinton's visit Wednesday to the northern resort city of
Cartagena will underscore Washington's support for the Pastrana government
and the multibillion-dollar program known as Plan Colombia. Mr. Pastrana
unveiled the program this year to halt drug production.

Colombia is the source of most cocaine and heroin sold on U.S. streets.
U.S. and Colombian officials say that the job of protecting cultivation
fields, drug labs and secret airstrips used for drug exports falls mainly
to the FARC, the main military force in rural Colombia's drug-producing
areas.

A smaller force of paramilitary fighters, known as the United Self-Defense
Forces of Colombia, is competing with the FARC for control of many
drug-production zones.

The FARC has promised not to interfere militarily with Mr. Clinton's visit.
It is not making the same pledge, however, regarding the 86 U.S. Special
Forces trainers who were deployed in southern Colombia this month to train
one of three counternarcotics batallions financed by the U.S. aid. The
trainers are expected to remain in Colombia until December.

"Plan Colombia is an excuse for military intervention," said a FARC leader
speaking anonymously. "They like to call us 'narco-guerrillas.' But why
don't they declare war on the narco-government or the narco-economy?
Because it is all a part of the same system. Everyone in Colombia profits
somehow from illicit cultivation. Everyone is touched by it."

Taxes and ransoms

Guerrilla leaders insist they are not promoting cultivation of illicit
crops and are not trafficking in drugs. Rather, they say, the FARC imposes
a "tax" on various facets of the trade.

The rebels also impose a tax on Colombian businessmen who do not want to be
kidnapped or have members of their family abducted for ransom. One
Colombian family alleged recently that the guerrillas kidnapped a
3-year-old, although the FARC leadership says it has been unable to confirm
the accusation.

"We have a policy that, as long as the army has its sources of income from
the state, we will maintain our own policy of taxation. He who does not pay
taxes is subject to detention," Mr. Paris explained.

Payment of taxes does not guarantee FARC protection, he said. The tax is
simply a fee for using land where the FARC operates.

"Let's say there is a Coca-Cola plant in our zone of influence, and we
collect taxes from them. This does not mean that we are obliged to provide
a bodyguard service for them," Mr. Paris said. "The formula is this: Pay
the tax or get out of the region."

When the FARC intervenes in local coca markets, he and others said, it is
to ensure that traffickers do not take advantage of peasant farmers and pay
them too little. That does not constitute drug trafficking, Mr. Paris
insisted.

'Lies. All lies.'

Army Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya, commander of the counternarcotics forces
receiving U.S. training and support, disagreed. He said the FARC is
directly involved in drug deals and has provided protection services for
traffickers since 1992.

"They say they are just trying to get a better price for the peasants.
Lies. All lies. They are businessmen," Gen. Montoya said during a briefing
with reporters earlier this month at the U.S.-financed Tres Esquinas
counternarcotics base in southern Colombia. "This is a business -- one of
the biggest businesses in the world."

Gen. Montoya estimated that the FARC earns up to $1.5 billion a year from
drug trafficking in southern Colombia. Diplomats have cited more
conservative estimates of around $500 million to $700 million. The FARC
says its earnings are far lower.

The rebel leadership says its income from the drug trade, kidnappings and
"taxes" is justified because of change in the world political structure
since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before, Mr. Paris said, guerrilla
movements in Latin America could rely on financial and logistical
assistance from the Soviets and Cuba.

"We built our movement without a dependence on help from outside. We can't
expect Cuba to finance an outside war while it is in the middle of an
economic crisis," Mr. Paris said. Kidnappings, extortion and taxing drug
traffickers are some of the ways to maintain economic self-sufficiency, he
said.

To maintain self-sufficiency in its fighting forces, the FARC also has
begun a campaign of forced recruitment, according to residents inside the
haven. They complain that children as young as 15 are being seized and
required to serve in combat.

A female commander who identified herself only as Mariana said that
children join the FARC voluntarily because their families have no means to
support them and because the government does not provide them with adequate
schooling.