COLOMBIAN REBELS' ATTACKS LINKED TO NEWS OF U.S. AID

BOGOTA, Colombia Apparently responding 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 attacks on isolated towns and police headquarters
in recent weeks, killing more than 200 people.

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

The attacks, carried out by the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia, or
FARC, are considered so serious that the army announced it would reinforce
its defenses around the capital and put 7,000 troops 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 to expand their military reach from far-flung rural fronts to the
cities.

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.

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
to block army reinforcements, then launched their attack with a barrage of
homemade missiles made of propane gas canisters.

One officer who hid said his colleagues had surrendered and were then
executed. When the armed forces finally arrived the next afternoon, they
found offices and houses destroyed. They also found propaganda pamphlets
criticizing the new U.S. aid package.

Rebel statements have called the U.S. aid program "a threat to the peace
process" and "throwing fuel on the fire."

The aid will provide 60 Blackhawk and Huey helicopters as well as support
for intelligence and training to a new anti-narcotics brigade that will
provide protection for stepped-up police activities in the southern
provinces of Putamayo and Caqueta. The two sparsely populated provinces are
FARC strongholds that contain 300,000 acres of coca for cocaine production.
It will take more than a year for all three battalions of the new brigade to
be outfitted and trained.