COLOMBIA VOWS END TO ABUSES

BOGOTA, Colombia - The Colombian military, whose human rights abuses have
barred it from receiving U.S. aid for the last few years, says it has
changed and is ready to meet the conditions of a $1.3 billion aid package
prepared by the Clinton administration. But critics inside and outside the
government wonder whether the new armed forces are not just a makeover of
the old.

Military leaders say human rights violations attributed to the armed forces
are down and the top brass is preparing a purge of corrupt and abusive
officers to comply with stipulations in the aid package. "The armed forces
takes human rights seriously," Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez said
in an interview. "And they understand that a military that violates human
rights doesn't have the backing of the people."

Brandishing human rights reports compiled by the government, Ramirez has
made several trips in the past 12 months to Washington to convince
lawmakers of this conversion and says the military is now cited in less
than 2 percent of all cases of human rights violations. He has also brought
journalists and diplomats to Colombian military bases to witness human
rights role-playing by some of the 70,000 soldiers who have been trained in
international humanitarian law.

However, even within the Colombian government, skeptics remain. They
question the military's claim that it has severed ties with the right-wing
paramilitary groups that rights monitors say are responsible for more than
70 percent of the more than 3,000 politically motivated murders of
civilians per year in Colombia.

"The army's abuses have fallen because the paramilitaries now do the dirty
work for them," a top government official said.

To sever ties with the right-wing groups, the Colombian military has agreed
to purge its ranks. In September, President Andres Pastrana will sign a
decree handing over special powers to a committee within the armed forces
to dismiss personnel suspected of committing human rights violations or
having connections to paramilitaries.

Pastrana dismissed three generals last year, one of whom reportedly was
involved in a series of massacres in the state of Norte de Santander in
which more than 200 people were killed during a three-month span. One army
captain, one lieutenant and two majors also are being investigated in these
cases. More dismissals are expected once the armed forces' special
commission begins its work.

The military is drawing from the Colombian police's experience. Former
police chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano used special powers to release more
than 11,000 officers during his seven-year stint as director. Serrano
gained support from Colombians and Washington politicians for his actions.
But the military is unlikely to take such harsh reprisals against its own
men, said Colombian political scientist Andres Davila, who published a book
on the armed forces last year.

"The military is not ready for a purge," Davila said. "They don't feel they
need to get rid of anyone."

Ramirez said probably about 100 members of the armed forces will be forced
to leave, and that none will face prosecution. No Colombian general has
been sentenced to jail for human rights violations. One colonel is serving
time, for organizing a massacre of civilians in 1989.

To date, most investigations of armed forces personnel have landed in
military courts, where prosecutions of officers are rare. But Ramirez said
the military justice system is more efficient than its civilian counterpart
and has undergone reform so that human rights cases involving torture,
forced disappearances and massacres will be tried in the civilian courts.

The United States has also pushed this process along by organizing seminars
for legal experts on judicial reform, training Colombian officers in human
rights and pressuring the government to take action against abusive
officers. In 1998, the Colombian government dismantled the 20th
Intelligence Brigade, which prosecutors had implicated in several killings
of civilians and which Washington had accused of promoting death squad
activity.

The 20th Brigade was accused of routinely organizing the assassinations of
Colombians who were critical of the government. Five members of the
brigade, including its former head, are also facing charges of
masterminding the assassination of Colombian Senator Alvaro Gomez in 1995.

Critics, however, say the 20th Brigade's personnel was reassigned to other
parts of the military. Many landed in the 13th Brigade, where the main
intelligence unit now operates, and at least one spy is being investigated
by the attorney general's office for a smear campaign against a peace
activist, a labor union leader and the Communist Party chief.

The recently approved U.S. aid package includes conditions that may push
the Colombian military to further reform. It calls for the State Department
to "certify" the Colombian government for its fight against right-wing
paramilitaries and abusive military officers and it maintained the Leahy
amendment, which prohibits U.S. money for Colombian military units involved
in human rights abuses.

But human rights groups say it is unclear whether the U.S. conditions
placed on the aid will be enforced. President Clinton can bypass the
certification process if it involves a "national security interest."

One unit that has passed through the evaluation process required by the
Leahy amendment to weed out abusers of human rights is the 24th Brigade,
based in the southern state of Putumayo. Local and international officials
have condemned both the police and the military in Putumayo for maintaining
close ties to right-wing militia groups that can be seen patrolling the
streets in the area with high-powered weapons.

The Pentagon has also hired a private consulting firm, Military
Professionals Resources Inc., to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the
Colombian Defense Ministry. MPRI is made up of former U.S. military
personnel and has between 10 and 12 people working in Colombia. A company
spokesman in Virginia said its role includes applying human rights
practices, but this does not involve training military personnel.