FARC TRIGGERS CONCERN IN U.S.

The Bush administration is debating whether to ask Congress to expand
the drug war in Colombia by letting U.S.-financed anti-narcotics
brigades attack rebel forces.

The argument to widen operations of American-created units, who are
now restricted to anti-drug operations, is bolstered by a recent U.S.
intelligence report, say senior Bush administration officials.

The report says that leaders of Colombia's largest guerrilla force
reached a consensus at a summit last month to aggressively seek the
overthrow of the country's democratically elected government.

Days later, on Jan. 20, leaders of the group, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish initials FARC), signed a deal
with the government of President Andres Pastrana to continue to seek
peace in a long civil war. FARC is a U.S.-designated terrorist group
that reaps hundreds of millions of dollars each year from Colombia's
massive network of coca labs and cocaine-processing centers.

Senior Bush administration officials said in interviews that the
confirmed intelligence report shows what was already suspected: The
communist-inspired FARC is just buying time through unproductive peace
talks while it mounts attacks and expands its highly lucrative cocaine
operations.

"The point of all this is they are not negotiating in good faith,"
said an administration official. "FARC is following a policy of fight,
fight, talk, talk."

The intelligence report comes at a pivotal moment for Colombian-U.S.
relations and for America's war on drugs.

The Bush administration last week asked Congress to finance a second
anti-narcotics brigade of Colombian soldiers to find and destroy coca
fields, laboratories and the processing of the final product - cocaine.

In a sharp departure from the Clinton administration policy, the Bush
team also wants Congress to fund a new concept: protecting an
oft-targeted oil pipeline critical to Colombia's economy and defending
power-generation facilities.

The United States would finance the two Colombian brigades and provide
Green Berets to train them with $731 million requested by President
Bush in his fiscal 2003 budget.

Equipping a brigade to protect vital infrastruture would take the
State Department program from purely anti-narcotic to an
anti-insurgency operation. Some key lawmakers, such as Sen. Patrick J.
Leahy, Vermont Democrat and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman,
oppose U.S. funding for Colombia's anti-rebel campaign.

Still, some Bush administration officials are advocating taking the
fight - and U.S. involvement - even further.

They want the brigades authorized to attack FARC units if intelligence
shows they are about to attack a village or other target.

"We want new rules," said one senior policy-maker, who spoke on the
condition he not be identified. "We want more latitude for
anti-narcotics brigades."

Under current policy, the United States is limited to providing
equipment such as Black Hawk helicopters, training and intelligence
strictly for the purpose of attacking drug operations.

The United States is limited to 400 GIs and 400 private
contractors.

But some Bush officials contend the policy is ineffective. It has done
little, they say, to dent Colombia's status as the No. 1 cocaine
supplier to the United States.

They say the drug source will never dry up until FARC itself is
defeated.

That means, they say, an end to Mr. Pastrana's three-year policy of
granting the rebels a huge safe-zone in southern Colombia, and letting
U.S.-backed anti-drug units attack FARC directly.

What the local army badly needs, U.S. officials say, are helicopters
that can provide the mobility to transport local forces quickly to
intercept advancing rebels.

Mr. Bush's 2003 budget hints at a broader, though undefined, role in
Colombia. It states, "In 2003, the budget will extend the reach of
counter-narcotics brigades in southern Colombia while beginning
training of new units to protect the country's economic lifeline, an
oil pipeline."

As a backdrop, officials say, there is a tense debate within the
administration on the effectiveness of spraying coca fields with
herbicide and destroying laboratories.

The State Department is due to release an annual coca cultivation
report as early as next month. The department claims the harvest in
Colombia decreased, but the CIA concludes the crop actually showed a
big increase over 2000's 336,400 cultivated acres, government sources
say.

Even the president's own budget sent to Congress a week ago only
boasts of only "modest results" in reducing coca output to date.

Mr. Pastrana granted FARC a Switzerland-size safe haven after taking
office in 1998 and beginning peace talks. Since then, U.S. officials
say, FARC has been free to increase its hold on the drug trade, use
the safe zone as a base to mount attacks on Colombian authorities,
stage kidnappings and increase its strength from about 10,000 fighters
to nearly 17,000.

"What they are trying to do is show Colombia they can carry the war to
the cities," said one Bush administration official.

Colombia holds elections in May to choose Mr. Pastrana's
successor.

Colombia has been wracked by a long civil war. FARC began as a Marxist
guerrilla group, then reinvented itself as part-insurgents and
part-drug traffickers, filling a void left when a joint U.S.-Colombia
campaign smashed the powerful cocaine cartels.

A much smaller left-wing group, the National Liberation Army (ELN),
also operates in Colombia, as do right-wing paramilitary groups
accused of massacring civilians and being involved in the drug trade.