KILLINGS PUT FOCUS ON RIGHTS ON EVE OF CLINTON COLOMBIA VISIT

BOGOTA - When they set off into the jungle that morning, they were just children on a grade school field trip.

Then they walked into an army ambush. Six of them died in a hail of machine-gun fire, and instantly, they became tragic symbols in the debate over protecting human rights as Colombia turns up the heat in its US-supported campaign against drug growers and traffickers.

The 30 pupils from a tiny rural school in Antioquia state were heading to a nearby hacienda with their teacher and two mothers. They had been walking for less than a half-hour when eight of them pushed ahead into a thicket of shrubs and trees, and the shooting started.

The bullets were fired by Colombian soldiers who had been hiding behind the bushes. In the early morning light and shadows, they allegedly had mistaken the children for leftist guerrillas they had been pursuing through the forest.

The Colombian government and military leaders immediately called the Aug. 15 shooting "human error" and suspended the soldiers pending an investigation, but the killings sharply escalated the growing public outrage in Colombia over the military's checkered human rights record.

It is in this climate of controversy that President Clinton will make a brief visit tomorrow to promote a $1.3 billion US aid package to help fight this country's exploding illegal drug trade. Clinton has already taken a stand in the debate.

Against the wishes of human rights activists in the United States and Colombia, he signed a waiver last week that allows the aid money to be delivered despite Colombia's failure to meet six conditions in the aid package designed to protect human rights.

Yesterday, at a news conference in Washington, human rights officials again criticized both Clinton and President Andres Pastrana of Colombia. The men will meet tomorrow in the coastal city of Cartagena.

It will be the first visit by a US president to the country in a decade.

The shooting of the children in Antioquia has shown how difficult it is to shield civilians from the three-decade war that has ravaged this South American country and left about 300,000 dead.

The violence escalated dramatically in the last decade, as leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups became more involved in Colombia's cocaine and heroin trade.

On Sunday, 20 people were killed in two separate massacres attributed to paramilitaries, according to government officials and news reports. Ten were killed execution-style in Cienaga, and 10 men were taken from a pool hall and shot point-blank, allegedly for being sympathizers of leftist rebels.

"Civil war is not a spectator sport," said one Bogota political analyst who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. "Ordinary people are in as much danger as the troops themselves, which is why it should be government's obligation to protect our human rights, and so far it has failed."

Despite the soldiers' remorse over the children's deaths, public anger was so great that it overshadowed what should have been a high point for Colombia's military: the heroic rescue of six hostages, including Guillermo Cortes, a well-known Colombian journalist, from a rebel hideout in Cudinamarca state three days earlier.

About 100 paratroopers carried out the nighttime operation, surprising rebel troops of the leftist FARC and freeing the hostages without suffering a single casualty.

"We'd be the first to lament a tragic accident, but to say we are a constant violator of human rights is not fair or true," Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez said in an interview yesterday.

"I think the Colombian people know that when it comes to human rights, they'd rather trust the military much more than either the guerrillas or paramilitary groups," Ramirez said.

Colombian officials hope that the US aid package, which was proposed by the Clinton administration and approved by Congress this summer, will boost their drug eradication efforts and give them new leverage in negotiating a peaceful end to the conflict.

Colombia's drug production, which accounts for about 90 percent of the cocaine sold in the United States, has doubled in the past five years as insurgent groups have entered the drug trade to finance their campaigns.

Pastrana, at the midpoint of an administration that has seen both increased violence and a severe economic crisis, also is counting on the aid to bolster his sagging popularity and to support his broad social agenda, known as Plan Colombia.

But the aid package has received mostly mixed reviews from Colombians. Some fear the money will lead to more war and endanger and displace thousands. Others worry that the heavy military emphasis of the plan, which includes 18 Blackhawk and 42 Huey helicopters and increased US military training, will draw too much American involvement in a war that can't be won.

Critics also fear that more hardware and more fighting will increase human rights abuses by all sides: leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups linked to the government, and the military itself.

"I think there are human rights abuses on all sides," said Mauricio Escobar, a 25-year-old college student in Bogota who joined tens of thousands of residents in a protest march Sunday. "These dialogues for peace that we've seen have been like lukewarm water, sometimes hot and sometimes cold."

Ramirez said the aid package will help strengthen the military's human rights training and internal judicial system, including the creation of a US-style judge advocate general's office to prosecute soldiers and officers accused of crimes.

Clinton has defended the waiver by saying that Pastrana has recently taken steps to meet the human rights conditions. Other US officials said withholding the aid money also would have affected funding for human rights programs.

In one of the positive steps cited by Clinton, Pastrana issued a directive Aug. 17 requiring military personnel accused of human rights abuses to stand trial before civil courts, rather than in a more lenient military court.

But human rights advocates say the Pastrana directive does not go far enough to ensure that soldiers accused of abuses will be tried in a civilian court or adequately punished.

"The real question is one of implementation and the fact is that we've seen a number of presidential decrees regarding human rights reforms, none of which have been implemented," said Winifred Tate, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, one of the groups that has criticized Clinton's support for the Colombian military.

"We hope the US will use its influence to change this situation, but we're distressed by the lack of progress to date by the Pastrana administration."