U.S. TO GIVE COLOMBIANS DATA TO HELP FIGHT REBELS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 - The Bush administration plans to provide military
intelligence to the Colombian government for its campaign against Marxist
rebels and is rushing spare parts to the country's armed forces, officials
said today.

Administration lawyers were assembling legal arguments to justify the
intelligence-sharing without running afoul of laws limiting American
involvement in Colombia to fighting the narcotics trade, not guerrillas.

"There are ways that we can support the government of Colombia in this
matter very specifically within the current law," said Richard Boucher, the
State Department spokesman.

The action comes two days after President Andres Pastrana abandoned a
three-year effort to reach a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as rebels intensified their attacks. Colombian
forces continued to sweep into a demilitarized zone that Mr. Pastrana had
ceded to rebel control in 1998.

The State Department announced the new help after Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell, who was traveling in China, spoke by telephone with Mr. Pastrana.

Secretary Powell praised Mr. Pastrana for showing "enormous patience over a
long period of time" in trying negotiate a deal with the FARC.

"He finally felt he could go no further and he had a responsibility to the
people of Colombia to protect them," Secretary Powell added. "We understand
the decision he made. We support him."

The Colombian government has been clamoring for months for the United
States to provide information about rebel movements from such sources as
telephone intercepts, aerial surveillance and satellite photos.

Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia's ambassador to Washington, voiced
satisfaction at the administration's move. The Pastrana government is also
seeking to win permission from the United States to use American- provided
combat helicopters and other equipment in the counter-insurgency struggle,
he said.

"We have been requesting this for some time," Mr. Moreno said. "This was at
the heart of providing more security for Colombians."

The United States has provided Colombia with military aid and training
under a $1.3 billion package called Plan Colombia. In its new budget, the
administration is seeking more than $500 million more for Colombia.

Troubled by the prospect of being drawn into a 38-year war that shows no
sign of abating, Congress has restricted the use of the American aid to the
counter-narcotics fight and a directive signed by President Clinton in 2000
bars the use of American intelligence to combat rebels.

Secretary Powell has repeatedly said that the United States has no
intention of getting involved in combat. Some lawmakers, moreover, express
doubts about aiding a military with a poor human rights record and
alliances to right-wing paramilitary forces.

Administration officials insist that the line between counter-insurgency
and counter-narcotics is blurred, since the 16,000-member FARC derives much
of its income from trafficking in drugs.

A senior administration official today said lawyers are studying how to
circumvent the Clinton restriction and provide intelligence to help
Colombian troops rout the FARC from the former demilitarized zone, which
covers 16,200 square miles.

"What Pastrana would like is more information in the former zone," the
official said. "Right now we give him information that is strictly limited
to counter-narcotics."

The lawyers may be aided by directives on intelligence-sharing issued by
President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said. The
United States designated the FARC a terrorist organization in 1997.

International perceptions of the FARC are hardening, which may provide the
administration with backing for a more aggressive counter-insurgency role.

After Latin American and European diplomats helped salvage peace talks last
month, the rebels unleashed 117 attacks, exploding four car bombs,
destroying 33 energy towers and, most spectacularly this week, hijacking a
plane and kidnapping a prominent senator, according to the Colombian
government.

Cesar Gaviria, a former Colombian president who is secretary general of the
34-nation Organization of American States, said the rebels have proved
themselves to be "terrorists." He urged governments in Europe and Latin
America to abandon notions of the FARC as a legitimate political movement
and sever all ties.

"There are a lot of countries that have given them sanctuary, support and
good treatment," Mr. Gaviria said in an interview. "I think it's going to
stop."

Josep Pique, the foreign minister of Spain, whose country holds the
rotating presidency of the European Union, said the E.U. should stiffen its
policies toward armed groups. Mr. Pique also expressed firm backing for
Plan Colombia, which many European governments had criticized for relying
too heavily on a military solution.

The senior administration official, who asked not to be named, acknowledged
that international opinion has still not coalesced on the best way to deal
with the FARC. But from Britain to Mexico, he said, the authorities
increasingly favor a stronger stance.

"I think 9-11 has really crystallized in Europeans' thinking the danger of
the FARC," the official said. People have abandoned the notion that the
rebels are "misguided agrarian reformers," he said. "They're narcoterrorists."