McCaffrey: Rebels working with drug gangs in Colombia

'Unholy alliance' called threat

Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle News Services

BOGOTA U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey said Monday that Marxist rebels
were working in an "unholy alliance" with powerful drug gangs that posed an
unprecedented threat to Colombia's democracy.

McCaffrey, who arrived Sunday, spoke after meeting for about 45 minutes
with President Ernesto Samper, whom he has derided in the past as "an
accomplice of international criminals" because of his alleged ties to the
Cali drug cartel.

In the keynote speech of his controversial visit, which broke a twoyear
freeze on toplevel U.S. contacts with the scandaltarnished leader,
McCaffrey set his sights on guerrillas instead of Samper.

"With the unholy alliance between the cocaine industry and the
revolutionary guerrilla movement, the drugtrafficker threat to Colombian
civil democratic society has again ratcheted up," McCaffrey said in his
address at a Bogota military academy.

"The melding of revolution and international criminal organizations have
created an unprecedented threat to democracy, the rule of law, and the very
fabric of society," he added.

Senior Colombian police and military officials have argued repeatedly in
the past that the country's main guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) has become a key player in the drug trade and
that it is now virtually impossible to draw the line between
counternarcotics and counterinsurgency operations in Colombia.

U.S. officials have played down that allegation in the past. But McCaffrey
who appeared to be setting the stage for calls for an increase in U.S.
aid to Colombia to curb the rebels' growing military might said both the
FARC and smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) were infested with
"narcocorrupted cadres" that have turned revolution into little more than
a grab for drug dollars.

The cocaine trade appears to be pumping about $60 million per year into the
coffers of these revolutionary/criminal enterprises," he said.

McCaffrey's arrival Sunday for a threeday visit coincided with an
antidrug raid in the jungles near Loma Linda in which Maj. Jairo Alberto
Castro and agent Carlos Bolivar lost their lives. The men were killed in a
helicopter that was taking off after police set fire to a drug lab.

Eduardo Gamarra, a Floridabased Latin American political analyst, said
McCaffrey was deliberately blurring the lines between the war on drugs and
the longrunning fight against rebels. "What U.S. policy is angling toward
is a greater presence of U.S. counterinsurgency advisers in Colombia," he
said.

Marco Leon Calarca, international spokesman for the FARC, denied the drug
trafficking charges and warned against U.S. "meddling" in Colombia's
internal affairs.

"If there was an influx of U.S. ground troops then our fight would change
radically and we would have to call on other sectors of society because it
would be a war against the (U.S.) empire," he said.

Samper, who hands over power in 10 months, has been severely weakened since
the start of his administration by charges that he received about $6
million in drug money to finance his campaign.

A statement issued by the presidential palace, hours after McCaffrey met
the embattled head of state, said Samper had promised the White House
official to push Congress for the approval next week of a bill that would
lift Colombia's six yearold ban on the extradition of drug lords and
other criminals with no exceptions.

In his speech, McCaffrey called extradition the single most important tool
in the fight against international crime. If approved by Congress with no
strings attached, it could pry open the door to the trial, in U.S. courts,
of the same jailed Cali cartel capos accused of financing Samper's
campaign.