COLOMBIANS USE US COPTERS TO REACH SITE OF MASSACRE

BOGOTA - Colombian troops flew in US-made combat helicopters to a
remote mountain town to battle rebels who attacked a police station
and claimed to have killed nearly two dozen police officers.

Just before dusk Sunday, 150 army troops and national police flew into
the town of Arboleda aboard Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, said the
national police chief, General Ernesto Gilibert. Some soldiers also
arrived on foot and clashed with rebels as they approached the town.

Security forces found only three survivors of Arboleda's 25-man police
contingent, said Alfonso Rodriguez Guerrero, an officer at national
police headquarters in Bogota.

The army was looking for the 14 missing police officers, and said they
had found the bodies of eight officers and at least four civilians.
They said the death toll was likely to rise as soldiers secured the
area.

The bodies were found "amid the ruins of their barracks, which was
totally destroyed," said Army Colonel Alberto Ardila, commander of the
army's 8th Brigade, which went to the scene of the two-day rebel attack.

Troops and police reinforcements, operating in the dark in a chaotic
situation, were trying to determine the fate of the rest of the
besieged policemen.

Ardila told local radio that two civilians were killed. Rodriguez
Guerrero put the number at three.

The attack by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was
one of the bloodiest since the United States approved $1.3 billion in
aid to battle leftist rebels and other armed groups which are involved
in narcotics production.

Controversy has arisen over whether US-supplied combat helicopters,
which provide security for planes fumigating drug crops in Colombia,
should be used to fight rebel guerrillas.

Gutierrez said radio transmissions from the besieged police officers
had been cut after midnight, about 15 hours after the attack began
Saturday morning. Rebels told a photojournalist who tried to enter the
town Sunday morning that they had killed 23 police officers.

"Communications with Arboleda have been severed and there is no way to
verify this information, but we fear the worst," said Colonel Norberto
Pelaez, police commander of Caldas province, where Arboleda is located.

Low cloud cover prevented reinforcements from arriving until late
Sunday. Troops also spent hours hiking over twisting mountain trails
to Arboleda, located 90 miles northwest of Bogota.

US Ambassador Curtis W. Kamman said Colombian security forces weren't
restricted to using the US-made helicopters in antidrug operations.

"These helicopters can be used ... to defend the police and military
forces if they are under attack in a zone where there are
antinarcotics activities," Kamman was quoted as saying in an interview
Saturday with ANCOL, the Colombian government's news agency.

However, Arboleda is not believed to be in a region producing cocaine
or heroin.

Some observers said US policy regarding military aid to Colombia is
growing increasingly blurry, and can lead to greater involvement by
the United States in the South American nation's 35-year civil war.
But others charge that restrictions on the US support are too tight.

This weekend's attack was similar to one mounted by the FARC on July
15 on the southwestern town of Roncesvalles. The rebels besieged the
police station in the town, and after police ran out of ammunition,
the guerrillas allegedly executed 13 of the officers. The deaths drew
criticisms, including in the US Congress, that the Blackhawks, if
used, could have saved the policemen.

Under the new US aid package, approved by President Clinton on July
13, Washington will provide 60 more helicopters, including Blackhawks
and Hueys, to Colombian security forces.