COLOMBIAN REBELS STEP UP PACE AND INTENSITY OF ATTACKS

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Peace talks between the government and Marxist rebels
collapsed just 11 days ago, and it took no time at all for Colombia to
plunge into a new, ominous phase of the long-running conflict. Almost
immediately after the talks ended, the rebels launched a coordinated series
of attacks aimed at spreading misery across this vast country while
demonstrating the government's inability to stop them.

In attacks that have raised concern in Washington and that analysts say may
foreshadow what a wider war could look like, the guerrillas have bombed
electrical towers, bridges and municipal waterworks while mining highways
and stepping up roadblocks.

These kinds of attacks are not new in Colombia's 38-year-old conflict, but
the rebels have dramatically stepped up the pace of the aggression and
their selection of targets appears increasingly audacious. They have bombed
two aqueducts, as well as the infrastructure at the reservoir that provides
water to this sprawling capital, causing little damage but heightening alarm.

Since the talks ended, more than 110 municipalities in 5 of the country's
32 provinces, representing 10 percent of the country's urban centers, have
been left in total darkness or forced to ration electricity because of
rebel bombings. Meanwhile, the sabotage of transmission towers has cut
phone service in 76 cities and towns across six provinces.

"We should be prepared for the possibility that we will suffer bigger
terrorist strikes," President Andres Pastrana told the nation in a
televised address last week.

The rebel aggression began hours after Mr. Pastrana broke off negotiations
with the rebels on Feb. 20, ending a three-year peace effort. It has
prompted the government to declare a large region of south and central
Colombia a war zone in which the army has new authority to bring order.

In six provinces, nearly one-third of the country, the military can impose
curfews, regulate the hours of operations for businesses, register
civilians and prohibit weapons and drinking. The government is also
offering rewards of up to $430,000 for information leading to the arrest of
rebel leaders.

The deteriorating situation is being closely watched in Washington, where
some lawmakers and Pentagon officials are pushing for a lifting of
restrictions to allow American counterinsurgency aid to this country's
army. Among other things, that would allow the Colombians to use
helicopters given to them by the United States to attack rebels. Right now,
such helicopters and other American hardware are restricted to use in
securing and destroying coca fields, the source of cocaine.

The Bush administration has decided, for now, to limit American involvement
mostly to the war on drugs, which undercuts the rebels' main source of
financing.

Many, if not most, American lawmakers have opposed counterinsurgency aid
because of the Colombian army's poor human rights record, but the
increasing aggression and brutality on the part of a rebel group that
Washington considers a terrorist organization could sway lawmakers, some
officials on Capitol Hill say.

"Some say it's not Al Qaeda, but these guys are trafficking up and down the
Pacific coast," said a senior Republican Congressional aide who works on
issues related to Colombia. "Those people who are following Colombia know
that we have to make a change of policy."

So far, the Bush administration has agreed to provide some intelligence
information to the Colombian government while smoothing the way to provide
replacement parts for helicopters used in counterdrug operations. But
analysts like Col. Joseph R. Nunez, a professor at the United States Army
War College who has written about this conflict, said those moves were not
enough.

"You have these forces wreaking havoc and they're going to have to be
addressed," Colonel Nunez said. "If we wait too long, we're going to regret
it."

The new wave of violence began after Mr. Pastrana, in a nationally
televised address, angrily broke off talks with the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia after four of its rebels hijacked an airliner and
kidnapped a senior senator who had been on board.

The Colombian Air Force then began bombing a large region in southern
Colombia that Mr. Pastrana had ceded to the rebels in 1998 as a venue for
peace talks. Elite army forces soon entered as the rebel group, known by
its Spanish acronym, FARC, withdrew from the main urban areas into the
jungle while offering little resistance.

But within hours after the army offensive began, rebel units in the remote
south struck back, focusing on infrastructure in a strategy that appeared
aimed at isolating and confounding Colombia's 40 million people.

"The idea is they are going to open various fronts to have a presence
throughout the country," said an official from a humanitarian organization
whose group has talked to the rebels. "I think they can paralyze much of
the commerce and transit in the country."

Colombian Army intelligence has shown that the rebels are particularly
intent on sowing misery among the middle and upper classes in the cities
while avoiding large-scale confrontations with a more capable army.

"We have to hit with everything we have, so that everything falls: bridges,
towers, the dam," a high-ranking guerrilla chief known as Romana, said in a
radio transmission intercepted by the military and published in Bogota's
leading newspaper, El Tiempo. "We have to deliver an urban blow, so the
oligarchy feels the war."

Outside this city of seven million, which has rarely felt much of a rebel
presence, guerrillas last week blew up a bridge and skirmished with troops
in three communities, one of them, Fomeque, just an hour's drive away.

"We were panicked, frightened that they would take the town," Javier Rios,
Fomeque's mayor, said on Friday, sitting in an office overlooking the
charming mountain town where soldiers repelled the rebels. "To me, it looks
like the rebels want to blockade the capital, then block the food supplies
and the water."

The stepped-up violence is alarming because while negotiations were going
on, the rebels are believed to have obtained sophisticated arms, added
funds and recruited hundreds of fighters to a 17,000-member force.

"They really and truly are not afraid of war," said a Western diplomat who
has talked to rebel commanders. "They expected there would be war. They
feel they can benefit from war. They don't believe the army can
significantly hurt them."

Former rebels interviewed this week said that within the organization,
guerrilla leaders and subordinates spoke openly of how the group never
intended for the peace process to end in an accord.

Rather, the plan had been to use the talks to stall, while strengthening
forces until violence reached the point where the government would break
off talks, the former rebels said. Then the rebel group would launch a wave
of attacks against the nation's infrastructure, in yet another stage in the
group's relentless effort to topple the government.

"The thinking has always been to take power," said Wilmer Gomez, 27, who
deserted three months ago from a southern region where the rebels hold
sway. "This is what you are seeing now, blowing up bridges, kidnapping high
government functionaries, dynamiting towers, aqueducts, oil pipelines."

Another rebel, Luis Enrique Gaitan, who operated with a guerrilla unit
outside Bogota, said the final goal had always been "to go into the biggest
cities and block roads so there is not commerce, nothing, so the government
feels pressured."

Military officials said the army is prepared to protect vital
infrastructure while driving the rebels out of their former safe haven,
which is twice the size of New Jersey. And virtually all military analysts
agree that the rebels are not strong enough to take power.

But the same analysts said the army, while having improved training and
mobility, is not strong or large enough to protect all crucial targets or
launch a knockout blow.

Already, the rebels have shown that their hit-and-run tactics are hard to
stop. Last week rebels killed a senator, Martha Catalina Daniels, and two
companions, the police said today. Ms. Daniels had been shot
execution-style and was tortured before her death, they said. On Feb. 23,
the group kidnapped an internationally known presidential candidate, Ingrid
Betancourt, adding her to five congressmen already being held as hostages.
The kidnapping shocked politicians, particularly those vying for
congressional seats in March 10 legislative elections.

"I had to suspend campaigning and instead send out my aides, who take
videos that voters can see," said Senator Jaime Dussan, who is running for
re-election. "I feel terror, because if they can pull you off an airplane,
then they can get you anywhere."

The effect of the violence, though, has been hardest on residents of
southern and eastern Colombia, where the rebels have mined roads, rigged
abandoned buses with explosives and relentlessly attacked electrical towers
and generators.

In some cities, the lack of road access has caused commerce to grind to a
halt. Shops have been shuttered because there is no electricity and food
supplies have dwindled, forcing the government to airlift provisions into
at least one provincial capital, Florencia.

"Right now," said Alvaro Pacheco, the mayor of Florencia, "we all feel like
we are hostages."