COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARY LEADER REPORTED DEAD

MIAMI, Dec. 29 -- The feared leader of an alliance of right-wing,
paramilitary death squads in Colombia may have been killed over the weekend
when Marxist guerrillas attacked his remote mountain compound, media
reports and statements from the warring factions said today.

Carlos Castano, whose forces have been accused of committing atrocities
over the last decade against leftist rebels and civilians thought to be
rebel sympathizers, was said to have died during an assault on his
stronghold near the northern village of Nudo de Paramillo by the nation's
largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Although reports of Castano's death have not been confirmed,
representatives of the leftist insurgent group told Colombian radio and
television today that he was killed in fighting that began Sunday and that
the guerrillas had his body and would soon show it to the public.

However, a caller to a Colombian radio station who identified himself as a
FARC member denied Castano had been killed.

A spokesman for the right-wing paramilitary forces -- known by the name of
their coalition, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia -- said
Castano's camp and the surrounding area were destroyed during combat and
that the leader had been missing at least since Monday morning. "There has
been no communication within the organization with Castano since [9 a.m.
EST] Monday. . . . The attack was very fierce," regional politician Max
Alberto Morales said.

Political observers said that if Castano has been killed, it could trigger
a wave of retaliatory violence by the paramilitary groups and pose a
serious threat to efforts by President Andres Pastrana to end Colombia's
three-decade-old civil war. Human rights groups have accused Colombia's
security forces of working in complicity with paramilitary groups in an
attempt to vanquish the country's estimated 15,000 guerrillas. Rights
groups in the United States and Colombia attribute about 70 percent of
political killings in Colombia to the paramilitary organizations.

The Pastrana administration is scheduled to begin peace talks with the
rebels on Jan. 7, a process that eventually would need the cooperation of
the paramilitary forces to succeed. Castano had been pushing the government
to recognize the paramilitary coalition as a legitimate political
organization and had offered to participate in peace negotiations.

Castano and his brother Fidel were founders in the early 1990s of the
People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar, a paramilitary organization that U.S.
and Colombian law enforcement officials acknowledge played a key role in
hunting down and killing drug cartel leader Escobar in 1993 after he had
escaped prison. The army and police, conscious of their debt, did little to
try to track Carlos Castano down until recently, despite a $1 million price
on his head.

Through close ties to the leaders of the Cali cocaine cartel, Castano and
his organization grew increasingly involved in drug trafficking. Last year,
the Drug Enforcement Administration labeled Castano a major drug trafficker.

Checked-by: Richard Lake