SECRET AID POURED INTO COLOMBIAN DRUG WAR

Continuing human rights abuses have not hindered flow of equipment and
advice to Bogota

Britain is secretly stepping up military assistance to Colombia as the
war on drug trafficking becomes increasingly entangled in the effort
to defeat leftwing guerrillas and drive them back to the negotiating
table.

Despite continuing reports of serious abuses by the security forces
and the concerns of human rights groups about President Alvaro Uribe's
tactics, Tony Blair has encouraged the Foreign Office to hold an
international conference on support for Colombia, beginning today.

Whitehall refuses to disclose the extent of British military
involvement on the grounds of national security. "We provide some
military aid but we don't talk about the details," a Foreign Office
spokeswoman said.

But a Guardian investigation can identify a number of key areas of UK
support.

7 SAS training of the narcotics police, the Fuerza
Jungle.

7 Military advice to the army's new counter-guerrilla mountain
units.

7 A surge in the supply of military hardware and intelligence
equipment.

7 Assistance in setting up an intelligence centre and a joint
intelligence committee.

The UK is now the second biggest donor of military aid to Colombia, a
security analyst with close ties to the Colombian defense ministry has
suggested. "The British like to keep a low profile here," he said.

The US defense department website openly gives details of the $2bn aid
given under Plan Colombia to fight what the administration calls
"narco-terrorists".

It includes training and equipping three military brigades and
providing 60 Black Hawk helicopters and Huey-2 gunships to eradicate
coca crops.

Unusually, the Foreign Office confirmed four years ago that Britain
had given training and advice on urban warfare techniques,
counter-guerrilla strategy and "psychiatry".

Since then ministers have admitted training the Colombian narcotics
police but declined to elaborate on grounds of "national security".
One of the reasons for their reticence is the role of the SAS, whose
activities are never formally acknowledged. Sent by Mrs. Thatcher in
1989 to fight the drug cartels, they are believed to have extended
their role to counter-insurgency training.

The new intelligence assistance builds on work begun in the early
1990s when an M16 station head was sent to Bogota to start an
anti-narcotic operation. After Labour came to power it was
considerably expanded and coordinated in London by an M16 officer
whose name is known to the Guardian.

British customs officers working with SAS and SBS soldiers have
arranged the interception of the fast boats the cocaine barons use to
send the drug for shipment through the Caribbean.

The additional military equipment has been substantial, particularly
for the navy and the army helicopter fleet. Foreign Office licenses
for exporting military items rose by 50% between 2001 and 2002. Last
year's items included cryptography material, missile technology,
components for combat helicopters, explosives, airborne refueling
equipment and technology for submarines.

Before this week's conference Amnesty International called on western
governments to stop giving military aid, because of the increasing
human rights abuses by the security forces. It said: "The Colombian
government has not implemented the UN human rights recommendations and
military assistance only gives a green light to the army to carry on
as before."

But Mr. Blair has made the country, blighted by 40 years of civil war,
a significant foreign priority, sending minis ters, retired generals
and security advisers to Bogota. When Mo Mowlam was in the Cabinet
Office in charge of drugs policy she went three times.

Advisers

Sir John Steele, head of security at the Northern Ireland Office,
General Sir Michael Rose, a former SAS commander, and General Sir
Roger Wheeler, former chief of the army general staff, were all sent
to Bogota to give advice during failed peace negotiations with the
main rebel group, Farc.

At least one Colombian general has been received in Belfast. The
intention of the exchanges was partially to improve the Colombian
security forces' respect for democratic government and human rights.

This week's conference, involving the EU, the US, several Latin
American countries and the IMF, is the second Britain has held in two
years. Asked why, the Foreign Office said the country had been
"identified by the PM as a priority".

The scale of human distress in Colombia is described by aid agencies
as the worst in the western hemisphere: 2.5 million people displaced
and political murders at the rate of 20 a day.

Human rights organisations have long accused the Colombian security
forces of backing the rightwing militias responsible for murders,
massacres and drug smuggling. Many military intelligence files are
said to wrongly describe civil activists as subversives or terrorist
sympathisers. The police are routinely accused by rights
organisations, and the US state department, of taking part in or
colluding in massacres.

Critics say the war on drugs - involving aerial spraying with
defoliants to kill the coca bushes from which cocaine is made - is
merely displacing the trade and the accompanying corruption and
political destabilisation to neighbouring countries and remoter parts
of the Colombian jungle.

Peace talks with Farc collapsed last year and President Uribe took
office last August with a mandate for a strong military offensive.
Most Colombians believe the Marxist rebels exploited the talks for
drug trafficking and hiding hostages.

President Uribe's latest policy document promises to defeat the rebels
and bring them to the negotiating table within two years. He is
creating peasant militias to support the army in the hope of returning
civil government to areas from which it has long been absent.

Although Britain has environmental reservations about aerial spraying
it allows the American technicians and pilots involved to be employed
through a British-registered company, DynCorp Aerospace Operations
(UK) Ltd, a subsidiary of DynCorp International, one of the US
government's biggest military contractors. It has a two-storey office
block in Aldershot, the home of the British army.

Mr. Uribe's election seems to have strengthened relations with Britain.
The son of a wealthy Colombian landowner who was killed by Farc in the
early 1980s, he recently spent a year lecturing in Latin American
studies at St Antony's College, Oxford. Concerns have been voiced
about his political past and the company he keeps. He dismisses them
as smears. "I have been honourable and accountable," he told Newsweek
last year.

As head of the civil aviation authority in the early 1980s he was
accused of offences in connection with granting air strip and pilots'
licenses. He was cleared but later his deputy was jailed for five
years for accepting campaign money from the Cali cocaine cartel. Then,
as mayor of Medellin, the drug barons' "sanctuary", he allegedly
accepted funds from the notorious trafficker Pablo Escobar for two
urban regeneration schemes.

In the late 1990s Mr. Uribe became governor of Antioquia province and
was instrumental in raising militias to help the counter-insurgency
drive. The plan badly backfired. Some of the groups committed serious
human rights violations and, when banned in 1997, many joined the
death-squad paramilitaries.

His security advisers General Rito Alejo De Rio, dismissed from the
army in 1999, and Pedro Juan Moreno, his former chief of staff in
Antioquia, have been accused of connections with the
paramilitaries.

In 1997 and 1998 the US customs seized three shipments of potassium
permanganate, essential in the manufacture of cocaine, bought by Mr.
Moreno's company GMP Productos Quimicos. The Colombian police and the
US drug enforcement administration believed that many of GMP's sales
invoices were fraudulent.

In 2000 the DEA confirmed the seizures and concluded that there was
"ample evidence" that the chemical might be diverted for illicit use.
Mr. Moreno insisted that it was for innocent purposes.

Despite these difficulties Mr. Uribe won the election with a 53%
landslide. He won the confidence of Mr. Blair when he visited London as
president-elect last July.

The Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell, who visited Colombia in May,
said yesterday: "There's terrorism and political insurgency, and the
drugs: they have both become inextricably linked. The drugs - not
ideology - are driving the conflict now and we take a strong view that
we all have a shared responsibility to tackle the problem.

"We are supporting what the Uribe government is doing in terms of
trying to professionalise its security forces and to reform
institutions, but that has to go hand in hand with respect for human
rights and the role of NGOs. We will be advising the Colombian
government to move forward to a negotiated settlement. We don't
believe there can be a fundamental military solution."