DRUG PROFITS SUPPORT COLOMBIA'S RIGHTEST GROUPS

To the Editor:

You write (editorial, Jan. 3) that Colombia's rightist paramilitary groups
maintain clandestine ties with the country's army as they carry out human
rights abuses, but that only some of these paramilitary groups "traffic in
cocaine and get money from traffickers."

In fact, a 1995 Colombian law enforcement report about paramilitaries
nationwide says drug trafficking is their "central axis" of financing. You
mention only one paramilitary leader, Carlos Castaqo. Another mentioned in
another Colombian police report, published by Human Rights Watch in 1996,
is Victor Carranza. Each man has been implicated in drug trafficking and
massacres.

This should come as no surprise. In 1989 Colombian Government investigators
found that the country's paramilitary groups had been taken over by Pablo
Escobar and his Medellin cartel.

Colombia's leftist guerrillas have also been involved in the drug trade, as
you say. But according to the second police report, so are some Colombian
military officers, including Maj. Jorge Alberto Lazaro, a former rural army
base commander.

Yet the Clinton Administration ignores these links as it provides
Colombia's army with new arms and advisers, ostensibly to fight drugs.

FRANK SMYTH
Washington, Jan. 5, 1998
The writer is a freelance journalist.