REBELS RESPOND VIOLENTLY TO AID TO COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia -- In an apparent response to the passage in the U.S.
Congress of $1.3 billion in aid for Colombia's armed forces, the country's
largest guerrilla group has begun a series of attacks on isolated towns and
police headquarters in recent weeks, killing more than 200 people.

The attacks, carried out by guerrillas operating in large units, have
underscored the armed forces' lack of mobility and intelligence tools that
the aid package is intended to improve. They have also further weakened
President Andres Pastrana by hampering his efforts to bring the military
and the opposition Liberal Party fully behind his effort to negotiate a
peace settlement with the rebels.

The attacks, which have been carried out by the country's largest guerrilla
group, the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia, or FARC, are considered
so serious that Monday the army announced that it would reinforce its
defenses around the capital and put 7,000 soldiers on alert.

Military analysts say the guerrillas in recent months have been stepping up
their efforts to organize more urban cells and even a clandestine political
party in an effort to expand their military reach from far-flung rural
fronts to the cities. And the latest attacks appear intended to disperse
the armed forces into static, defensive positions scattered around the
country, the analysts say.

Many of the attacks have been staged from a large demilitarized zone handed
to the guerrillas by the Colombian government in 1998 as a gesture to
promote peace negotiations, which have sputtered for more than a year.
Military and police units were removed from the zone, giving the Marxist
rebels a safe haven in the heart of the country.

Senior military officials said the rebels appear to be attempting to expand
the zone, which is already the size of Switzerland, and create corridors to
other areas they control in the southern provinces of Tolima and Huila to
improve their supply lines and offensive range.

"People ask why we don't simply surround the zone, but it is impossible,"
Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramacurez said in an interview this week.
"It is easy for them to attack and return to the zone the same day without
having to carry heavy provisions."

The most serious of the recent attacks came late Friday night when 180
rebels attacked the ranching town of Roncesvalles, 100 miles southwest of
Bogota, overwhelming a police station staffed by 14 police officers,
killing 13 of them. In a coordinated action, the rebels blew up sections of
highway leading to the town to block army reinforcements, and then launched
their attack with a barrage of homemade missiles made from propane gas
canisters.

Rebel communiques have called the U.S. aid program "a threat to the peace
process." In a recent interview with the Associated Press, a FARC leader,
Ivan Rios, compared the stepped up U.S. involvement to "throwing fuel on
the fire."

The U.S. aid package will provide 60 Black Hawk and Huey helicopters, as
well as support for intelligence and training to a new anti-narcotics army
brigade that will provide protection for stepped up police activities in
the southern provinces of Putumayo and Caqueta. The two sparsely populated
provinces are FARC strongholds that contain 300,000 acres of coca for
cocaine production.