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