COLOMBIA REBELS DENY ATTACK ON RIVALS

LOS POZOS, Colombia--Amid the escalating violence of Colombia's many-sided
conflict, this country's oldest and largest insurgent group denied Sunday
that its guerrillas had tortured and killed members of a smaller insurgent
force.

The accusation raised the specter of an added element of violence that
already pits Marxist guerrillas against right-wing private armies as well
as the armed forces, including the police.

Rebel leaders in this southern jungle town--here to attend public hearings
related to the prolonged peace negotiations with the government--confirmed
reports of a guerrilla attack on a police station in the mountains on the
other side of the country.

Police in Bogota, the capital, told local media that they feared for the
more than two dozen police officers in the community of Arboleda after the
attack Saturday. "It looks like many have been killed," police Col. Mario
Gutierrez said.

The attack on the police is the latest episode in the increasing violence
that the National Liberation Army, known by the initials ELN, says has come
to include guerrilla-against-guerrilla confrontations.

The ELN accused the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
of brutally killing its guerrillas "in a manner worthy of the
paramilitaries," the private armies that pursue both rebel groups. The
paramilitaries are known for mutilating their victims before and after
killing them.

However, Carlos Antonio Lozada, a spokesman for the FARC negotiating team
in talks with the government, denied the alleged attack, in the remote
southwestern province of Narino. "Our forces captured and disarmed 31
members of the ELN at the request of the civilian population and told them
to leave the area," he said.

The civilians accused the ELN of extortion and theft, he added, and he
denied that any guerrillas had been killed.

Although both groups are Marxist, they grow out of different traditions.
The FARC, with an estimated troop strength of 12,000 to 15,000 fighters, is
a mixture of Communists and members of the Liberal Party who disagreed with
a peace agreement that was to have ended Colombia's civil war nearly four
decades ago. They reorganized and kept fighting.

About one-third the size of the FARC, the Cuban-inspired ELN, founded by
Spanish priests, grew out of the liberation theology movement. The two
groups tried and failed to form a common front a decade ago and since then
have largely kept a distance from each other.

Tensions have increased as each insurgent group has begun separate peace
talks with the government. Security analysts have said that the prospect of
negotiations intensified the struggle on all sides: All parties are trying
to increase the territory under their control to strengthen their
bargaining positions.

In addition, rebels and paramilitaries alike have acknowledged that they
are partly financed by "taxes" on drug crops. Much of the fighting between
guerrillas and paramilitaries has taken place in areas where heroin poppies
and coca bushes--used to produce cocaine--are grown.

Colombia produces three-fourths of the world's cocaine and an increasing
share of the heroin consumed in the United States.

Rebels blame a $1.3-billion U.S. contribution to Plan Colombia, the
government's anti-drug and peace package, for the increased fighting in
recent weeks.

About half the aid is to pay for Black Hawk and Huey helicopters for use by
Colombian armed forces in protecting planes that fumigate drug crops.