SCORES REPORTED DEAD AS REBELS AND MILITIAS CLASH IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia, July 21 -- Clashes between Marxist rebels and
Colombia's main right-wing paramilitary force have killed up to 100
people this week in two remote areas of the Andes mountains,
authorities said today. The fighting, confirmed by a paramilitary
warlord, Carlos Castano, were among the bloodiest yet this year and
included a battle for control of a region in northern Bolivar Province
long known as a stronghold of the Cuban-inspired Army of National
Liberation, or E.L.N..

"The idea is to force them out of the only sanctuary they have left,"
Mr. Castano told a local television station.

He was referring to what military sources have described as intense
combat since Wednesday around the San Lucas mountain range, where
commanders of the E.L.N., Colombia's second-largest guerrilla army,
are thought to have their main base.

Col. Jaime Martinez, a regional chief of the National Police, told
reporters that as many as 60 guerrillas and 15 members of Mr.
Castano's outlawed United Self-Defense Forces, an umbrella
organization of ultra-right militias, were thought to have been killed
in the fighting.

But he said the death toll was unofficial and based only on accounts
from peasants fleeing the area.

Mr. Castano, who spoke in a brief phone interview with R.C.N.
television, did not comment on the number of dead in the San Lucas
fighting. But he rejected rebel assertions that the paramilitary
offensive there was backed by government security forces, long accused
of tacitly supporting militias in their war against leftists and
suspected rebel sympathizers.

The offensive came as several E.L.N. commanders, two of whom were
released on parole from a maximum security prison today, prepared to
meet Colombian business, civic and labor leaders in Geneva on Monday
to prepare for full-fledged peace talks with the government.

No firm date has been set for formal negotiations, which would come
more than a year and a half after the government opened talks with the
larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Cuba has agreed to act as a "facilitator" and possible mediator in the
talks, together with the governments of France, Spain, Norway and
Switzerland.

Colombia's internal conflict, which has intensified in recent years as
rebels built up their own sources of financing -- including widespread
kidnapping and involvement in the drug trade -- has killed more than
35,000 people since 1990.

The other battle this week also began on Wednesday, according to local
government officials, when FARC rebels raided one of Mr. Castano's
strongholds in a rugged mountain area of northwest Antioquia Province,
killing at least 28 paramilitary gunmen.

The death toll was the highest reported this year involving gunmen
from the paramilitary group, which human rights groups blame for most
of the peasant massacres and other atrocities committed in Colombia's
protracted civil conflict.

"The information we have is that there are about 30 dead, including
two civilians," said Jaime Montoya, mayor of Ituango, where the
fighting occurred.

Mr. Castano disputed the toll in his televised comments, however,
saying no more than 15 of his men had died, along with 6 guerrillas
and 5 civilians. .