COLOMBIA SEIZES COCAINE IT LINKS TO PARAMILITARIES

BOGOTA (Reuters) -- Colombian police seized more than 3,270 pounds of pure
cocaine Tuesday, saying it was apparently earmarked to help bankroll the
activities of Colombia's main right-wing paramilitary group.

The multimillion-dollar haul was thought to be one of the first directly
linked to the outlawed United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the
ruthless militia force headed by paramilitary chieftain Carlos Castano.

"This is a blow from the police to the Self-Defense Forces," Gen. Alfredo
Salgado, deputy national police chief, told reporters.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, cocaine sells for up
to $36,000 per kilo (2.2 pounds) wholesale in the United States, meaning
that Tuesday's haul could have been worth more than $53 million.

Castano, a former army guide, is considered to have unified Colombia's
disparate paramilitary groups under the umbrella of the Self-Defense Forces
in early 1997. He has been accused of being a major drug trafficker,
shipping out cocaine along the same clandestine routes used for arms smuggling.

Local and international human rights groups say his 7,000-member group,
which they blame for most of the peasant massacres and other atrocities
committed in Colombia, has close links with the military.

Col. Gentil Vidal, the National Police commander in the southwestern
province of Valle del Cauca, said the consignment of cocaine was discovered
in a house near Buenaventura, the leading port on Colombia's Pacific coast.

Six paramilitary gunmen guarding the shipment were arrested, and a small
cache of U.S.- and Russian-made assault rifles, grenades and bulletproof
vests was seized, Vidal told Reuters.

He said the cocaine had been packaged for shipment abroad and the arrested
men all worked under Castano, who admitted in a television interview in
March that the drug trade was a leading source of financing for his group.

Like the Marxist-led Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) -- the
hemisphere's largest surviving 1960s guerrilla army -- the Self-Defense
Forces deny playing a direct role in drug trafficking. But Castano says
they collect "taxes" and protection money from drug lords and peasants
cultivating illicit drug crops in areas under their control.

Colombia supplies an estimated 80 percent of the world's cocaine and is a
leading source of the heroin sold on U.S. streets.