COLOMBIA REBELS THREATEN TO BUY MISSILES

LOS POZOS, Colombia - Rebels threatened yesterday to introduce
surface-to-air missiles into Colombia's civil war and vowed to battle
a planned US-backed offensive against the drug crops that the
insurgents use as a source of revenue.

Critics of Washington's $1.3 billion aid package, expected to be
passed by Congress by week's end, have said the package will intensify
the war and pull the United States into a quagmire. Analysts expect
the rebels to fiercely resist attempts by US-trained Colombian troops,
backed by US-supplied helicopters, to seize coca-growing areas. Coca
is the raw material used for cocaine.

Ivan Rios, a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC, said his group would arm coca farmers if needed to resist "US
aggression."

Rios said rebels also may purchase surface-to-air missiles to shoot
down the helicopters, the most expensive component of the aid package.

The rebels have not used such missiles, apparently fearing it would
force the government to escalate the war sharply, and they are not
known to possess any. But with millions of dollars in proceeds from
their drug-protection racket and with links to arms dealers, the
rebels could afford to buy the missiles.

Washington's assistance is an attempt to stem the flow of cocaine and
heroin from Colombia, and to shore up the country's elected
government. Both drugs are produced in Colombia in huge quantities.

But Rios, speaking in Los Pozos, a village in Colombia's coca-growing
south, said the aid is tantamount to "throwing fuel on the fire" of
the 36-year civil conflict.

"The peasants will defend themselves, and we will stand by them," said
the bearded rebel, a pistol and a knife bulging from his olive-green
fatigues. "It's going to be war out there."

Meanwhile, delegates from 21 countries and the United Nations arrived
here in Caqueta State for a two-day conference on alternative policies
for curbing Colombia's world-leading cocaine production.

Envoys from Europe, Canada, and Japan flew into a rebel-controlled
airport, where the brick control tower bears a huge painting of a
grinning Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, the rebel group's 70-year-old
founder and leader.

Buses escorted by rifle-toting rebels on motorcycles took the envoys
to lodgings at a military base evacuated 19 months ago when President
Andres Pastrana ceded five townships to the rebels as a goodwill
gesture for peace. Peace talks, however, have stalled.

Under the US aid plan, the Colombian military will receive advanced
helicopters and Green Beret training for army battalions tasked with
"securing" coca plantations where the rebels are entrenched. Drug
crops guarded and taxed by FARC and rival militias would undergo
aerial spraying.

The rebels are expected to fight back.

"The FARC has been in Caqueta and Putumayo for decades, so why would
they give it up without a fight?" said Adam Isacson, a Colombia
specialist with the Center for International Policy in Washington.

Government plans also are being drawn up to resettle as many as 50,000
people who could be displaced by the so-called "Push into Southern
Colombia."

Hundreds of peasants traveled for days to the alternative development
conference to speak out against aerial fumigation.