DEA AGENT DIES IN SHOOTING NEAR COLOMBIA BAR

BOGOTA - A US Drug Enforcement Administration agent was shot and killed
early yesterday in Bogota, apparently after an argument at a bar,
authorities said.

Frank Arnold Moreno, 37, was shot once in the chest at about 1 a.m. outside
the El Divino bar, US officials said.

Moreno, who had been in Colombia for about a year, was not with any other
DEA agents at the time. He was shot after what one US Embassy official
called ''a bar brawl.''

''I don't think it had anything to do with drugs,'' said the official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity. ''I understand he was walking away and then
boom, boom.''

Moreno was struck from behind by a 9mm bullet, said a senior Colombian
police official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two witnesses took
Moreno to a Bogota hospital, where he was declared dead.

The DEA has about 50 agents in Colombia, the world's leading producer and
exporter of cocaine. About 80 percent of the cocaine sold on US streets
comes from Colombia, as does an increasing amount of heroin.

It was not immediately known if Moreno had been carrying a gun, and the
police official said it did not appear that Moreno had fired any shots,
although he said the US agent had initiated the quarrel. An embassy official
said Moreno and the gunman had been told to leave the bar just before the
shooting. Police said they were pursuing a suspect.

Moreno, of Edinburg, Texas, was recently married and had previously been
assigned to Oklahoma City, officials said.

Authorities would not say whether the killing was directly related to a drug
investigation. They said they believed the last time a DEA agent was shot in
Colombia was in 1982, when two agents investigating marijuana smuggling were
wounded in an attack in the Caribbean port of Cartagena.

Checked-by: Don Beck