COLOMBIA REBELS FIGHT DRUG EFFORT

LOS POZOS, Colombia - (AP) - 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, which form 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,
surface-to-air missiles would be within the rebels' reach.

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 an interview 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 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 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 FARC-controlled airport
whose 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 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 tasked with
"securing" coca plantations where the rebels are entrenched. Drug crops
guarded and taxed by the FARC and rival paramilitary militias would undergo
aerial fumigation.

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 are also 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 poor peasants traveled for days to the alternative development
conference to speak out against aerial fumigation.

"Fumigation kills the coca, but it also kills animals, makes children sick,
and destroys nature," said Heymer Cobo, a coca farmer from neighboring
Putumayo State where about two-fifths of Colombia's coca is grown.

The United States, which suspended contacts with the FARC after a rebel unit
killed three Americans civilians last year, boycotted the conference.