AMERICANS AMONG 2 KILLED AND 3 MISSING IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 14 - An American working for the United States
government and a Colombian soldier were shot dead after their small plane
crash landed on Thursday in a region of southern Colombia dominated by
guerrillas, Colombian and American officials said tonight. The rebels are
believed to have then made off with three other Americans who had also been
aboard the United States government plane when engine failure forced it down.

Colombian military helicopters, reconnaissance aircraft, counterinsurgency
troops and American rescue specialists immediately undertook a large-scale
search operation across a swath of jungle in isolated, lawless Caqueta
Province in southern Colombia. But by early this evening, little was known
about the fate of the three Americans who were believed to have been taken
prisoner. At least four soldiers searching the area for survivors were
wounded by land mines, and Colombian television reported skirmishes between
troops and rebel fighters.

American officials declined either to reveal the identities of the four
Americans on board the plane or to discuss what agency they were working
for. But officials in Washington familiar with the circumstances of the
crash said they were not working for the Drug Enforcement Administration or
the Central Intelligence Agency, nor were they employees of the embassy.

The kidnappings of the Americans, if confirmed, would be the first of
Americans working for the United States government in Colombia, which is
engaged in a 39-year-old civil conflict with leftist rebels. In recent
years, the rebels have declared American forces to be legitimate military
targets but had yet to carry out their threats.

"We anticipated this," said a senior Congressional aide in Washington
involved in shaping policy on Colombia. "We've increased our presence and
this is something you envision when you go down there to help this democracy."

Colombian military officials said the Americans, flying aboard a plane used
in counter-drug operations, were probably taken away by the battle-hardened
Teofilo Forero unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
Colombia's largest and most belligerent rebel group. The single-engine
Cessna 208 crashed after suffering engine trouble, but officials here and
in Washington said the rebels probably took quick advantage, surrounding
the aircraft and taking the occupants hostage.

The rebels did not take immediate responsibility for the kidnappings, but
in radio communications intercepted after the crash the guerrillas were
heard to say, "We have them, we have them."

Meanwhile, the rebels were accused of detonating a house full of explosives
during a police raid today in the southern city of Neiva, just north of
where the American plane crashed. At least 15 people were killed by the
explosives, which the police said the rebels were planning to use in an
assassination attempt on Saturday during a visit to Neiva by President
alvaro Uribe.

On Feb. 7, the rebel group set off a 330-pound bomb in an exclusive Bogota
club, killing 33 people.

Colombian military officials said the Americans were on an intelligence
mission in the remote region, which consists of jungles interspersed with
cattle pastures.

"These are planes that help us to identify information that is useful for
the Colombian government," Colombia's defense minister, Martha Lucia
Ramirez, said. "They are helping in intelligence work that for the
government is very important."

The plane and its occupants - a pilot, a co-pilot and three passengers -
had left Bogota about 7:20 a.m. on Thursday. Shortly before 9 a.m., it
experienced engine trouble a few miles west of the town of Puerto Rico,
American officials said.

The pilot veered south, presumably in an effort to land in the provincial
capital of Florencia, according to American officials. The plane, however,
crash landed in a region long dominated by the the rebels. Indeed, the
crash site is on the edge of a huge swath that Colombia's previous
president, Andres Pastrana, ceded to the the rebels in 1998 for peace talks
that fell apart last year.

Colombian search-and-rescue teams immediately lifted off in Black Hawk
helicopters from the Larandia military base nearby and quickly found the
charred wreckage, along with two bodies, Colombian and American officials said.

Colombian military officials said the two men appeared to have been shot
execution-style, but American officials said they might have been killed in
a gunfight. Early this evening, the State Department said the bodies of the
American and Colombian were recovered and transferred to the Larandia
military base for identification and to determine the cause of death.

In comments to reporters, President Uribe lamented what he called the
deaths of two people "whose assassinations have been confirmed in the south
of the country."

Analysts here said they believed that the rebels, if they decided to hold
the Americans, might use them as leverage to prod the government of
President Uribe into a broader prisoner exchange. The rebels are holding
dozens of Colombian soldiers and several politicians, among them a former
presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt. She was kidnapped on a road in
the same general area as yesterday's plane crash.

"Before, when they held Americans they were civilians, with no ties to the
government," said Alfredo Rangel, a military analyst who has advised the
Colombian Defense Ministry. "Now there could be a different purpose, which
would be the prisoner exchange, which is political, and that could further
involve the United States government."

Washington has in recent years made Caqueta and an adjacent province,
Putumayo, the epicenter of the war on drugs, funneling $2 billion since
1997 to mostly pay for helicopters, aircraft and other equipment used to
fumigate vast swaths of coca fields. The efforts have destroyed tens of
thousands of hectares of coca, depriving the FARC of millions of dollars it
draws from taxing the coca trade.

In defense, rebels and drug traffickers often fire automatic weapons at
crop dusters, in isolated cases killing Colombian or other foreign pilots.
Three Americans have been killed -- one in 1997 and two in 1998 -- when
they lost control of their aircraft.

The United States military lost five servicemen in July of 1999 when a De
Havilland RC-7 reconnaissance aircraft crashed into a mountain during a
counter-narcotics mission. They are considered the first American military
personnel killed in Colombia's drug war.