COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT VOWS CRACKDOWN ON DEATH SQUADS

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Andres Pastrana, admitting Colombia
faces a "humanitarian tragedy," has vowed to crack down on the
right-wing paramilitary death squads blamed for killing scores of
peasants in the last week.

But Pastrana, in a speech late Wednesday in defense of a military with
a long history of human rights abuse, denied allegations that
Colombia's army operates in a close alliance with the paramilitary
groups that have killed leftists and suspected rebel sympathizers with
impunity for more than a decade.

Those allegations, which could derail the Clinton administration's
proposed package of $1.6 billion in mostly military aid to fight the
drug trade and Marxist guerrillas who protect it in Colombia, were
raised anew Wednesday in a report by Washington-based Human Rights
Watch.

Human Rights Watch said in the report it had documented ties between
half of Colombia's 18 army brigades and paramilitary forces committing
atrocities against civilians.

In a speech to Colombian governors late Wednesday, hours after the
human rights report was made public, Pastrana deplored three massacres
in the last week in which paramilitary brigands -- also known as
self-defense groups -- reportedly shot or hacked to death up to 70
people with machetes in northern Colombia.

"The self-defense groups ... are one of the most worrisome symptoms of
the degradation of the conflict," Pastrana said, referring to the
long-running war in which more than 35,000 Colombians have died in the
last decade.

"Their macabre passage through parts of the country, bathing the
ground with blood, has to end. And to stop their acts of barbarity,
cruelty and cowardliness we will use -- let there be no doubt -- all
the legitimate force of the law."

Referring to peasant massacres and other atrocities carried out by
paramilitary groups, forces "blinded by hatred and intolerance" and
"responsible for this humanitarian tragedy," he said the government
would stop at nothing to dismantle them and see that their leaders are
caught and jailed.