COLOMBIAN ARMY STILL AIDING PARAMILITARY FORCES

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - Units of the Colombian Army continue to work closely with right-wing paramilitary forces that are involved in killings of civilians and threats against government human rights investigators, according to a report made public today.

The report, by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, says that army
brigades in Colombia's three largest cities, including the capital, Bogota,
have continued to sponsor and collaborate with the outlaw paramilitaries in
the last three years, even as military leaders have made some progress in
curbing abuses by their own troops.

The problem remains so intractable, Human Rights Watch officials said, that
only by putting new human rights conditions on its aid to Colombia is the
United States likely to bring significant reform. "What must be done is to
use the engagement of the United States in Colombia now to force the army
to break its links to these paramilitary groups," said Jose Miguel Vivanco,
the executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.

The report was made public as the Clinton administration is intensifying
its push in Congress for $1.3 billion in new aid for Colombia over the next
year and a half. Most of the aid would go to the Colombian security forces
to help them push into remote areas of the country where drug production is
thriving and leftist guerrillas generally hold sway.

In a statment tonight, Colombia's vice president, Gustavo Bell Lemus,
denied any institutional tie between government forces and the
paramilitaries, and asserted that Human Rights Watch sought through the
report to obstruct the approval of American aid.

Mr. Bell noted that the report was based largely on information gathered
from Colombian government investigators. He cited this as proof that
government judicial agencies "are carrying out their work in an adequate
and efficient way."

Clinton administration officials say they are aware of the Colombian
military's human rights problems, but they argue that President Andres
Pastrana is determined to curb official abuses and that American aid will
help him to succeed.

Mr. Vivanco, other human rights advocates and some members of Congress say
such assurances are not enough. Expecting the aid package to be approved,
they have begun lobbying for amendments to it that would bar the Pentagon
and the C.I.A. from sharing intelligence information with Colombian units
that are known to have supported paramilitary groups and would cut off
American aid to units that persist in helping the paramilitaries.

Human rights advocates in Colombia have asserted for several years that
while abuses by army forces were dropping precipitously, military units
were effectively handing over their dirty work to the well-organized and
well-financed rightist armies.

The Human Rights Watch study cited "compelling" information suggesting that
the army's Third Brigade in Cali secretly worked with the country's most
notorious paramilitary leader, Carlos CastaF1o, to form a new paramilitary
group after leftist guerrillas abducted 140 worshipers from a Cali church
last May.

The report said the new force, called the Calima Front, was formed by
active-duty and reserve officers of the Third Brigade.

The Calima Front was subsequently linked to at least 40 killings and the
forced displacement of about 2,000 people from their homes in the conflict
zone, the report said, quoting local officials.