ATTACKS BY COLOMBIAN REBELS APPEAR AS RESPONSE TO U.S. PLAN

BOGOTA, Colombia July 19 -- Apparently responding to the passage of $1.3
billion in aid for Colombia's armed forces in the United States Congress,
the country's largest guerrilla group has made a series of audacious
attacks on isolated towns and police headquarters in recent weeks, killing
more than 200 people. The attacks by rebels operating in large units have
underscored the military's lack of mobility and intelligence tools, which
the aid is intended to remedy. They have also further weakened President
Andres Pastrana by hampering his efforts to bring the armed forces and the
opposition Liberal Party fully behind his effort to negotiate a peace
settlement with the rebels.

The attacks by the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia are considered so
serious that on Monday the army announced that it would reinforce its
defenses around the capital, putting 7,000 troops on alert.

The rebels have been increasing their efforts to organize more urban cells
and even a clandestine political party to expand their reach from rural
fronts to the cities, according to military analysts. They say the latest
attacks appear intended to disperse the armed forces into defensive
positions around the country.

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

Senior military officials said the rebels appeared to be trying 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.

"People ask why we don't simply surround the zone, but it is impossible,"
Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez 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 attacks came late Friday when 180 rebels assaulted the
ranching town of Roncesvalles, 100 miles southwest of Bogota, overwhelming
a police station and killing 13 of the 14 policemen. In a coordinated
action, the rebels blew up sections of highway leading to the town to block
army reinforcements.

A policeman who hid said that his colleagues had surrendered and then been
executed. When the armed forces finally arrived the next afternoon, they
found the mayor's office, a telephone office, a supermarket and a dozen
houses destroyed. They also found propaganda pamphlets criticizing the new
American aid package strewn around the town.

Rebel communiques have called the aid program "a threat to the peace
process." In an interview with The Associated Press, a rebel leader, Ivan
Rios, compared the stepped-up American involvement to "throwing fuel on the
fire."

The aid will provide 60 Black Hawk and Huey helicopters and support for
intelligence and training to a new antinarcotics army brigade that will
provide protection for stepped-up police activities in the southern
provinces of Putamayo and Caqueta.

Critics of the American program note that the brigade will not operate in
the demilitarized zone and that the guerrillas can simply move their
operations out of Putamayo and Caqueta while planters grow their coca
deeper in the jungle.