U.S. DRUG CZAR QUESTIONS COLOMBIA REBELS ON PEACE

MIAMI (Reuters) - Colombia's Marxist rebels are criminal gangs making huge
profits on the drug trade and recent attacks cast doubt on their commitment
to peace talks with Colombia's new government, U.S. drug czar Barry
McCaffrey said.

A nationwide offensive by the rebels last week, in which scores of soldiers
and police were killed, was a move ``in the direction of open warfare to
push the apparatus of the state over'' and a slap in the face to new
President Andres Pastrana, who was inaugurated Friday, he said.

McCaffrey spoke to news agencies on Saturday after attending the
inauguration in Bogota.

Shortly after he was elected in a June presidential runoff election,
Pastrana met with the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) and agreed to launch talks within his first 90 days in office aimed
at ending Colombia's 30-year-old civil conflict. The fighting has claimed
35,000 lives in the last decade.

To pave the way way for those negotiations, Pastrana has promised to pull
government troops out of a huge area about the size of Switzerland.

Both the FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), Latin
America's oldest and largest rebel forces, have said they will hold peace
talks with Pastrana.

But elements of both groups took part in the attacks last week, one of the
biggest guerrilla offensives in many years, before silencing their guns on
the day of the inauguration.

The FARC said that the attacks were final protests against outgoing
President Ernesto Samper, who it said left the country ''wallowing in
crisis'' because of corruption and violence. It reiterated the rebels'
desire to negotiate with his successor.

McCaffrey said the FARC devoted two-thirds of its forces to guarding or
transporting drugs and operating drugs laboratories, had perhaps $1 billion
in reserves and made hundreds of millions of dollars a year from drug
trafficking.

``They are after demilitarization, they are after a cessation of aerial
eradication -- that's the only way to get at coca production and opium
production -- and the FARC wants that stopped,'' he said.

``Of course the danger is all they are after is consolidation of their
gains prior to the next phase of their movement ... If you look at their
actions, particularly this offensive, it's almost as if their dominant
focus is to maintain money-making criminal activity.''

The rebels deny involvement in the drug trade.

Colombia is responsible for 80 percent of the world's cocaine supply and is
a leading player in the heroin trade.

While he did not see a peace dialogue as impossible, McCaffrey said, the
offensive was ``a shock to all of us.''

The ELN, he said, was also heavily involved in drugs as well as kidnapping,
extortion and efforts to ``shake down'' oil companies.

``Next year Colombia may be a net importer of oil, sitting on these giant
new discoveries,'' McCaffrey said. ``But who will invest in Colombia when
the central pipeline gets blown five or more times a month?''

McCaffrey said that once Pastrana has a strategy in place for dealing with
the drug trade and the guerrillas, he hoped more U.S. aid to fight drug
trafficking would be available than the $100 million given last year -- an
amount that made Colombia the biggest single recipient of such U.S. aid.

Asked what scope there was, given the strength of the rebels, for the
United States to take military action against them, McCaffrey replied,
``None.'' He described the current U.S. military presence in Colombia as
minimal.

He said there was a ``modest presence'' of Air Force personnel at ground
radar stations and the occasional training mission but military operations
on the ground would be ''unsuccessful and inappropriate.''

``If we are going to fight a war on drugs it will be around people's
kitchen tables here in the United States,'' he said.

McCaffrey bade farewell to ``a painful four years'' dealing with Samper,
whose term was tainted by claims he bankrolled his election campaign with
millions of dollars from the Cali drug gang.

``This genuinely is the opening of a new chapter,'' he said, adding that
Pastrana's ``people appear to be honest, well-educated, patriotic''.

But Colombia remained ``unfortunately, in the short run ... the principal
drug threat to the United States.''

Checked-by: Richard Lake