Colombia To Get Aid In Fighting Insurgents

U.S. WILL INCREASE INTELLIGENCE-SHARING

The Bush administration hopes to begin providing the Colombian military
with sophisticated intelligence information on guerrilla insurgents within
"a matter of days," authorized in part under a presidential anti-terrorism
directive adopted after Sept. 11, administration officials said yesterday.

In a statement issued last night after it was cleared with the

traveling White House in China, the State Department said, "We are looking
at specific ways to continue to support the Government of Colombia during
this difficult period." It cited "increased terrorist attacks" in recent
weeks by the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Colombia has urgently asked the United States to provide intelligence
information, including intercepts from guerrilla satellite telephones and
other communications as well as aerial surveillance and satellite
photographs of FARC installations, so it can plot rebel movements and
anticipate attacks.

U.S. intelligence-sharing with Colombia is restricted to counternarcotics
activities under a directive, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000,
that prohibits intelligence involvement with Colombia's larger guerrilla
war. Congressional restrictions similarly limit the use of U.S.-provided
military equipment in Colombia.

But government lawyers are examining whether the sharp escalation of the
Colombian conflict this week, and President Andres Pastrana's labeling
Wednesday of the FARC as "terrorists" for the first time, provide
maneuvering room.

The lawyers are looking at whether expanded intelligence cooperation can be
allowed under a National Security Presidential Directive, signed by
President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, that provided new
guidelines for sharing U.S. intelligence in the worldwide hunt for terrorists.

Although the U.S. government long ago branded the FARC a terrorist
organization, its activities have been confined to Colombia. At the same
time, Pastrana had been reluctant to call the guerrillas terrorists as long
as he was conducting peace negotiations with them, and Congress had made
clear it would not support direct U.S. involvement in a foreign
counterinsurgency effort with echoes of Vietnam.

Congress has repeatedly imposed restrictions on military assistance on the
grounds that the Colombian military violates human rights and is closely
allied with the other major party to the Colombian conflict -- an outlawed
anti-guerrilla paramilitary army held responsible for numerous civilian
massacres and other rights violations.

Clinton's directive on intelligence-sharing, signed at the launch of the
current counternarcotics assistance program, was strongly supported by the
CIA, which shared congressional concerns and did not want to be tied to
such abuses.

But events this week appear to have altered a number of calculations.
Pastrana declared an end to three years of

inconclusive peace talks with the FARC on Wednesday, after the guerrillas
hijacked a commercial airliner, forced it to land on a deserted Colombian
highway and kidnapped a Colombian senator who was aboard.

He ordered the military to reoccupy a 16,000-square-mile area in the
south-central part of the country that he had ceded to the guerrillas as a
"safe zone" during peace talks. Colombian Air Force fighters pounded
guerrilla installations inside the zone on Wednesday night, while ground
forces massed around its borders in apparent preparation for routing as
many as 8,000 rebels believed to be inside.

Civilian officials in the Pentagon have headed a faction that contends the
United States should drop its distinction between counternarcotics
assistance and counterinsurgency cooperation, especially since the
guerrillas are deeply involved in the drug trade. If not enthusiastic
support, that argument has gained new acquiescence in other parts of the
administration as Colombian democracy is increasingly threatened.

"There's a general feeling that this would be the right thing to do,"
another senior official said yesterday of the intelligence-sharing plan.
"But we want to make sure that it's a legal thing to do."

He predicted that the decision would be made "in a matter of days . . . not
weeks," as soon as Bush and his senior foreign policy advisers return from
Asia this weekend.