HIGH-LEVEL U.S. TEAM VISITS WAR-TORN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA - A heavyweight U.S. government team began a two-day
visit to Colombia Tuesday amid growing alarm in Washington at a surge
in the guerrilla war coupled with calls for big increases in military
and anti-drug aid.

As the world's top cocaine producer and home to the longest-running
civil conflict in the hemisphere, Colombia has long been viewed by
U.S. officials as a matter of concern but rarely seen as an immediate
threat.

But cocaine and heroin output is spiraling, Marxist rebels are beefing
up their military strike-force in case slow-moving peace talks break
down and appear to be reaping a vast fortune from ever closer ties
with the drug trade.

The visit by State Department No. 3 Thomas Pickering, along with the
department's Latin American specialist Peter Romero and Defense
Undersecretary Brian Sheridan, head of U.S. Special Forces operations,
is seen as an indication that Colombia is fast becoming a top U.S.
priority.

``Pickering is the State Department equivalent of a five star general.
The fact he's going with Romero and Sheridan is a clear reflection of
the sharp escalation in the conflict that Washington is preparing,''
said Washington-based Carlos Salinas, chief Latin American researcher
at Amnesty International.

Pickering, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, and his delegation
arrived two weeks after a trip by White House anti-drug director Barry
McCaffrey and a week after a visit by Gen. Charles Wilhelm, head of
the U.S. Army's Southern Command.

McCaffrey has repeatedly said Colombia, Latin America's third most
populous nation with 40 million inhabitants, is facing an
``emergency.''

He, together with some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, is calling for
military and counternarcotics aid to Colombia -- already the world's
third largest recipient of U.S. aid -- to be increased by as much as
fourfold to $1 billion next year.

During his visit Pickering will meet President Andres Pastrana and
military leaders as part of what Washington billed as an effort to
improve bilateral ties after icy relations with the drug-tainted
administration of former president Ernesto Samper.

``Pickering...is involved in a whole panoply of U.S.-Colombian
relations going beyond just the fight against drugs, including the
peace process and the difficulties Colombia has been having in dealing
with certain security issues,'' State Department spokesman James Rubin
said at a Washington briefing.

The United States said an increased aid package would not imply a
frontline role for U.S. personnel in the three-decade-old internal
conflict that has claimed more than 35,000 lives in just 10 years. But
McCaffrey conceded there is no longer a dividing line between
counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations, accusing an
estimated 20,000 ''narco-guerrillas'' of earning up to $600 million a
year from drug trafficking -- charges the rebels deny.

Plans for a massive increase in U.S. aid to Colombia has paralleled
the unraveling of the peace process, launched in January with no prior
cease-fire deal, between the government and the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), the hemisphere's largest surviving 1960s
rebel army.

The FARC suspended talks indefinitely after failure to agree on the
creation of an international monitoring team. Critics also accuse the
FARC of failing to reciprocate sweeping government concessions and of
plotting attacks from a Switzerland-sized area in the southeast that
Pastrana cleared of security forces as a forum for talks.

Washington has publicly voiced support for the stop-start peace
process but is pressing ahead with training its own elite Special
Forces in Colombia, instructing new Colombian army units and sharing
information on rebel movements.

Without strict controls, that strategy may only serve to fuel the
bloody conflict, according to Washington-based Human Rights Watch.

``Increasing military aid to Colombia could be like setting more
gasoline on fire unless the administration is able to press the
Colombian military to disengage from (illegal, right-wing)
paramilitary groups and ensure accountability for human rights
abuses,'' said its executive director Jose Miguel Vivanco.