COLOMBIAN REBEL DENOUNCES U.S. AID

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - A leader of Colombia's second most powerful
leftist rebel group says that a $1.6 billion U.S. aid package "will be used
against the guerrillas and that will escalate the war" in his country.

Pablo Beltran, a top official of the National Liberation Army, said the
package proposed last month by President Clinton "is supposedly for the
fight against drug trafficking, but it is really for the armed forces."

"How can they expect us to disarm when they're reinforcing the army?" he
asked reporters Friday during the Sao Paolo Forum, an annual gathering of
Latin American leftist parties and factions.

"Our fight will have to grow, and we will not disarm," he said.

U.S. officials say the aid would help Colombia's army tackle growing
cocaine production in the country, where both leftist guerrillas and
rightist paramilitary groups have forged links with drug traffickers.

It would pay for new equipment, including 63 new helicopters, and training
of two new anti-drug battalions of Colombia's military meant to retake
rebel-held jungle areas where cocaine production is increasing.

Some would also go to help peasant farmers shift away from growing coca.

Beltran's group has in recent weeks launched a nationwide sabotage
campaign, blockading major highways and dynamiting electricity pylons and
oil pipelines. The attacks have forced power rationing for hundreds of
thousands of Colombians.

The group, known by its Spanish initials ELN, is demanding that President
Andres Pastrana withdraw troops from a swath of northern Colombia to allow
peace negotiations in a 35-year insurgency that has killed 35,000 people.

In November 1998, the government pulled the army from a Switzerland-sized
region in the south as a condition for opening talks with the country's
largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Pastrana so far has refused to create a similar safe haven for the ELN in
northern Bolivar state, though there are now indications he will agree.

Last week, thousands of peasants in the region blocked six main roads in a
weeklong protest against the proposed demilitarized zone. On Friday, the
government signed an agreement with local leaders, promising that the
community would be included in any peace talks with the ELN.