PERU BOLSTERS ARMY PATROLS ALONG COLOMBIA BORDER

IQUITOS, Peru (Reuters) - Peru bolstered army patrols on its jungle border
with Colombia this week amid worries that Marxist guerrillas from its
war-torn northern neighbor could cross into the Andean nation, an army
spokesman said Friday.

The sending of helicopters, boats and soldiers to the frontier came days
ahead of a scheduled visit to Peru by top U.S. anti-drugs official Barry
McCaffrey, as international concern grows that an upsurge in Colombia's
rebel and narcotics violence could spill over its borders.

The troops, which are patrolling a 1,000 mile-long river border, have
reinforced two battalions of 1,300 soldiers sent by President Alberto
Fujimori earlier this year. Fujimori has said he will crack down on any
attempts by rebels to cross into Peru.

"We have set ourselves up all along the border," a spokesman at a military
base in Iquitos, the main town in Peru's Amazon region, told Reuters.

He declined to reveal the size of this week's reinforcement.

Fujimori announced Monday the government would introduce an obligatory
military call-up for Peruvians if the country needed to thwart rebel attacks
from Colombia.

The frontier, weeks away by river and road from Lima, is only a few hundred
yards wide. Many Peruvian villagers said before the military deployment
earlier this year that they lived in fear of the right-wing paramilitaries,
rebels and drug traffickers who dominated the zone.

The region is a focus of drug smuggling between Peru and Colombia, two
nations responsible for much of the world's cocaine supply.

The U.S. government is worried that Colombia's growing violence could be a
destabilizing factor in the region and has accused Colombian rebels and
rival ultra right-wing death squads of funding their efforts with proceeds
from drug trafficking.

REUTERS