GUERRILLAS PREPARED TO PULL U.S. INTO WAR

LOS POZOS, Colombia -- Rebels threatened Thursday to introduce
surface-to-air missiles into Colombia's civil war and vowed to battle
a planned U.S.-backed offensive against the country's drug crops -- a
source of wealth for the insurgents.

Critics of Washington's $1.3 billion aid package, expected to be
passed by Congress by week's end, have said it will intensify the war
and pull the United States into a quagmire. Analysts expect the rebels
to fiercely resist attempts by U.S.-trained Colombian troops, backed
by U.S.-supplied helicopters, to seize coca-growing areas. Coca is the
raw material 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
"U.S. aggression." Rios said rebels may also purchase surface-to-air
missiles to shoot down combat helicopters -- the most expensive
component of the U.S. aid package.

The rebels have thus far refrained from using such missiles,
apparently fearing it would force the government to escalate the war
sharply, and are not known currently to possess any. But with millions
of dollars in proceeds from their drug-protection racket and with
links to arms dealers, the rebels certainly could obtain 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 long-standing
democracy. 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 rebel, a pistol and a large 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
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 FARC-controlled
airport whose 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 armed rebels on motorcycles whisked 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 have stalled, however.

Under the U.S. aid plan, the Colombian military will receive advanced
helicopters and Green Beret training for new army battalions whose job
will be "securing" coca plantations where the rebels are entrenched.