US GROUPS DEMAND CRACKDOWN ON PARAMILITARIES

WASHINGTON -- Major U.S. human rights groups and influential members
of Congress are demanding that Colombia cracks down on the right-wing
paramilitary groups responsible for the killing and abduction last
week of human rights monitors.

They said the failure of the government of President Andres Pastrana
to move against the paramilitaries in the wake of what the State
Department called ''an atrocity'' should prompt Washington to reassess
its plans to provide tens of millions of dollars in military aid to
the Colombian army.

''The past week's events certainly call into question the wisdom of
providing significant assistance to the Colombian army at this time,''
said Coletta Youngers of the Washington Office on Latin America
(WOLA), which joined Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty
International in demanding action by the Pastrana government.

Their outcry followed an incident on Jan 30 when two men were pulled
off a bus near Bogota and executed and the earlier abduction and
disappearence of two men and two women on Jan 28. All the victims were
well-known human rights leaders in Colombia.

The administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton plans to provide
nearly 300 million dollars in security and military aid to Colombia,
making Bogota the biggest recipient of such aid anywhere outside the
Middle East.

Most of the money and equipment is earmarked for the counter-
narcotics police, but some 40 million dollars is slated for the army
which, until last year, received virtually no U.S. aid due to its
human rights record and its ties to the paramilitaries.

Some of the latter funds will be used to train and equip a 900- man
battalion beginning this month, according to newspaper reports,
although Youngers told IPS that when she met with the high command in
Bogota last Friday, she was told three battalions would benefit from
the programme.

The State Department has described some senior officers' relationship
with the paramilitaries as acquiescence or tolerance at the very
least, but human rights groups here and in Colombia have obtained what
HRW's Jose Miguel Vivanco Thursday called ''very solid and credible
evidence'' of active collaboration at the local level.

Moreover, the current army high command is dominated by senior
officers whose connections with serious rights abuses, including
paramilitary ties, Vivanco called ''very questionable.''

The killings and abductions of the human rights workers came at a
critical moment in Colombia where historic peace talks between the
government and the oldest and most powerful guerrilla group, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) began last month. FARC
and two other smaller groups are believed to control about half of
Colombia's territory.

Carlos Castano, the leader of a coalition of paramilitary groups, has
said he wants to join the peace talks. But the FARC and other groups
insist that a final peace will be possible only when the
paramilitaries are disarmed and broken up.

Last month, paramilitaries under Castano's command launched operations
in which they carried out massacres of some 137 people in a dozen
separate incidents. These killings were followed Jan. 28 by the
abduction in Antioquia department of four human rights monitors of the
Popular Training Institute (IPC) and, two days later, by the
execution-style slaying of two activists with the Committee in
Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP).

Both groups are widely respected by rights groups here. Indeed, the
CSPP's former director was one of four Colombians who received the
prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award here just last year.

Castano took responsibility for the abductions in a Feb. 1 letter in
which he accused his captives of being ''three parasubversives and a
guerrilla.'' In the wake of protests by key congressmen here, he sent
a second letter Tuesday to HRW and the lawmakers' offices, among
others, in which he said he would release two of the hostages.

The letters charged that many human rights groups in Colombia,
including the Attorney General's own Human Rights Unit were
''facades'' for the guerrillas and that the kidnapping marked ''a new
stage'' of conflict in which groups under his command will consider
rights activists as ''military objectives.''

While the targeting of rights monitors is nothing new in Colombia's
civil conflict -more than a dozen were killed in 1997 and five more
last year- Castano's latest warning ''has provoked widespread fear
within the Colombian human rights community,'' according to the three
groups here.

They demanded that Bogota take all necessary measures to obtain the
release of the hostages and that Pastrana himself meet with
representatives of human rights groups and take action, which his
predecessor had promised last April, to guarantee their protection.

In addition, the groups called on the government to ''take immediate,
emergency measures to combat paramilitary groups.'' This should
include purging the armed forces of officers who maintain ties to
paramilitary groups or who tolerate their activities and carrying out
''the hundred of arrest warrants'' in effect against paramilitary
leaders, including Castano.

The groups also demanded that the Clinton administration, and
especially its embassy in Bogota, show greater support for human
rights defenders than it has to date. It urged Ambassador Curtis
Kamman, whom Youngers described as ''very silent,'' to personally
visit human rights offices to show US backing.

The groups also called for Washington to allocate more funds for the
Human Rights Unit of the Attorney General's Office and for aggressive
enforcement of the ''Leahy amendment,'' which forbids US military aid
from going to any units or officers in Colombia's security forces
believed to have committed rights abuses.

The same groups have strongly supported Pastrana's peace efforts and
have also commended the administration's support for the Colombian
president, who took office last August.

The administration has been split internally between forces which
support Pastrana's peace initiative and strict enforcement of the
Leahy amendment and more hawkish forces who believe Washington should
do more to support the military in its war against guerrillas who,
like the paramilitaries, also are accused of protecting the drug trade.

The hawks have had a strong ally in Congress among Republicans led by
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms and his
counterpart in the House of Representatives, Rep. Benjamin Gilman. In
one of three letters sent by US lawmakers to Pastrana this week,
however, Gilman referred to the abduction and killings as
''unspeakable crimes.''