AMERICAN ADVISERS TRAINING COLOMBIAN TROOPS

BOGOTA, Colombia U.S. troops have begun training Colombian soldiers at
a jungle base, officials said Tuesday, as a $1.3 billion U.S. aid
initiative to help Colombia fight drugs and rebels gets under way.

The 83 U.S. military personnel are working with members of a Colombian
anti-narcotics battalion at Larandia military base, Colombian and U.S.
officials said.

The base is located in the Amazon River jungle only a two-hour drive
from the main stronghold of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC.

The U.S. troops are barred from accompanying Colombian soldiers into
combat. Although the FARC has declared it will fight the anti-drug
offensive, it has not threatened to attack the U.S. soldiers directly.

The U.S.-trained Colombian troops--backed by donated Black Hawk and
Huey combat helicopters--are to seize drug-producing areas from the
FARC and other armed groups, which use drug proceeds to buy weapons.

Airplanes could then destroy the crops of coca and poppy, which
produce cocaine and heroin respectively, by aerial spraying without
risk of being shot down.

Washington's aim is to stem the flow of drugs into the United States
and shore up Colombia's democratically elected government.

Under the aid package passed by Congress and signed by President
Clinton last month, no more than 500 U.S. troops and 300 contractors
can be in Colombia.

Underscoring Washington's stake in the anti-drug effort, Clinton is
scheduled to visit Colombia on Aug. 30--the first trip by a U.S.
president to Colombia since George Bush in 1990.

Ahead of the visit, Clinton's chief adviser on drug policy, former
Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was scheduled to visit Colombia on
Wednesday and Thursday to meet with Colombian President Andres Pastrana.

McCaffrey will be accompanied by Undersecretary of State Thomas
Pickering and Gen. Charles Wilhelm, commander in chief of the U.S.
Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America.

One Colombian battalion previously trained under an earlier aid
package is deployed at Tres Esquinas base near the heart of Colombia's
coca-growing region. The two additional battalions to be trained under
the current package were expected to also operate from Tres Esquinas.

The battalion in training is expected to be operational by December.

Meanwhile, ultra-right paramilitary gangs in northern Colombia on
Tuesday killed 11 men they suspected of being guerrilla sympathizers,
police said.

They said the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, an umbrella
organization of ultra-right militias, carried out the killings in
separate incidents in three towns.

Victims were dragged out of their homes at gunpoint and shot to death,
police said.

They said that over the last three days Marxist rebels of the National
Liberation Army, or ELN, had bombed 18 power pylons in northwest
Antioquia province and neighboring Santander province.

On Sunday, ELN rebels dynamited a bridge on the main highway between
Bogota and Medellin--one of Colombia's most important routes. Transit
authorities said repairs could take at least two weeks.

In a separate operation Tuesday, ELN gunmen set up several roadblocks
along major highways in the north and south of the country and torched
at least 17 vehicles, including buses, trucks and private cars, while
passengers stood by, police said.

The ELN, Colombia's second largest rebel force with some 5,000
fighters, has targeted electricity infrastructure over the last year
to protest government plans to privatize the national power grid.

Colombia has suffered three decades of fighting between Marxist
guerrillas, state security forces and paramilitary groups. More than
35,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting in just the
last 10 years.