Insurgents step up effort to derail Colombia vote

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) Leftist rebels intent on torpedoing nationwide
municipal elections intensified their intimidation campaign Friday, setting
off bombs, paralyzing transport and forcing many businesses and schools to
close.

At least 53 candidates have been killed in recent months and more than
2,000 have withdrawn from Sunday's election for governors, mayors and other
state and local offices after receiving death threats. Guerrillas are
mostly responsible, though rightwing paramilitary groups also have been
involved in vast areas outside state control.

The effort to ruin the balloting has been the guerrillas' most effective
and serious challenge to Colombia's democratic process in their 30year
insurgency.

President Ernesto Samper told Colombians in a radio interview Friday that
they must answer guerrilla violence ``by voting for peace and voting for
democracy.''

Critics say some of the responsibility for Colombia's increased guerrilla
activity lies with Samper, whose ability to govern has been sharply
curtailed by a scandal involving allegations he accepted millions of
dollars in campaign funds from the Cali drug cartel.

In the latest violence, a police officer and an army captain were killed
while defusing a bomb Friday in Puerto Santander on the Venezuelan border,
while on a highway outside the northern town of El Banco a bomb in a trash
bin killed a civilian and injured two others, the national police said.

Some two dozen bombs, mostly small charges, exploded Thursday and early
Friday in six towns and cities, targeting police stations, electoral
offices and buses.

Meanwhile, Colombian and foreign groups denounced Thursday's rebel
kidnapping of two election monitors, both delegates from the Organization
of American States.

``This is a major violation of international humanitarian law,'' said
Almudena Mazarrasa, the U.N. special human rights representative in Colombia.

In Washington, the State Department condemned the abductions. Lee McClenny
called it an attempt ``to subvert free, peaceful and democratic elections''
that would not succeed.

The National Liberation Army has vowed not to release the Chilean and
Guatemalan observers until after the balloting. OAS delegation chief
Santiago Murray of Argentina said the 33 other observers in his group
from around the hemisphere would not be deterred by the kidnappings.

``These guerrillas are insane,'' said Gen. Rosso José Serrano, the national
police commander. ``Their heads are empty. They have no ideas, no political
agenda.''

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest rebel
group, and the National Liberation Army control large areas of the
countryside. Both groups espouse Marxist ideology while earning tens of
millions of dollars annually from kidnapping, extortion and exacting ``war
taxes'' on cocaine and heroin producers.

Both groups this week have banned travel in various regions.

Samper said balloting would proceed normally in 95 percent of Colombia's
municipalities, but political analysts consider that overly optimistic.
They say rebels have influence in more than onethird of the country's
1,072 municipalities.

Military commander Gen. Manuel José Bonnet said Friday that the 200,000
police officers and soldiers on alert throughout the country had already
prevented serious disturbances.

Still, there is concern that the rebels will exact retribution in towns
after the elections are over and security forces have left. Bonnet himself
has acknowledged that authorities do not control a majority of Colombia's
territory.