U.S. AID TO BATTLE TERRORISM IN COLOMBIA 'INTENSIFYING'

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The United States will provide Colombia with
counterterrorist aid -- in addition to military aid to fight drug
trafficking -- as part of the new global war on terrorism, the U.S.
ambassador to the South American country said Friday.

Washington plans to train and equip elite anti-kidnapping and bomb squads,
assist civilian and military counter-terror investigators and help Colombia
guard its oil pipelines from rebel bomb attacks, Ambassador Anne Patterson
said.

The new aid would be in addition to a controversial U.S. military plan
aimed at helping Colombian security forces fight leftist rebels and
right-wing paramilitaries, who have been embroiled in civil war for 37 years.

Fighting drugs -- a main source of funding for the rebel groups and
paramilitaries -- would remain the main U.S. focus. But "there's no
question we are now focusing more on terrorism in Colombia" after the Sept.
11 attacks on New York and Washington, Patterson said.

Two leftist Colombian rebel groups and a rival rightist paramilitary
faction are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Patterson said the United Sates had already planned to aid and provide
intelligence assistance to Colombian anti-kidnapping squads before last
month's attacks. That plan and other anti-terrorist efforts would now be
"intensifying," she said.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana and President Bush are scheduled to
meet in Washington on Nov. 11 to review relations, Foreign Minister
Guillermo Fernandez de Soto said Friday.

"All of the (Colombian) outlaw groups have to understand that it's not just
rhetoric that the world changed after Sept. 11," Fernandez de Soto said.

Rebels are responsible for the majority of the more than 3,000 kidnappings
reportedly annually in Colombia, and have been waging a sabotage campaign
against oil pipelines. The nation's largest guerrilla group, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has also kidnapped and
killed U.S. citizens in Colombia.

Washington is also turning up its scrutiny of landowner-backed paramilitary
groups that are waging a brutal massacre campaign against suspected leftists.

Patterson said the State Department on Friday was to cancel the visas of
five Colombians believed to be helping finance the paramilitary United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.