U.S. TO ADD ANTITERROR AID TO ANTIDRUG EFFORT IN COLOMBIA

Training and equipment for elite anti-kidnapping and bomb squads are
among plans, an official said.

BOGOTA, Colombia - The United States is planning to go beyond helping
Colombia battle drugs by providing counterterrorist aid as part of
the new global war on terrorism, Ambassador Anne Patterson said
yesterday.

The Bush administration plans to train and equip elite
anti-kidnapping and bomb squads, assist civilian and military
counterterror investigators, and help Colombia guard its oil
pipelines from rebel bomb attacks, Patterson said in an interview.

"Certainly, Sept. 11 has enabled us to do more of these kinds of
things," she said of the broadened assistance.

The assistance would be in addition to a U.S. military aid plan aimed
at helping Colombian security forces fight leftist rebels and right-
wing paramilitaries engaged in drug trafficking.

The new, broader aid could fuel accusations of U.S. "mission creep"
in Colombia, which is embroiled in a 37-year civil war.

Patterson stressed that fighting drugs remained the main U.S. focus.
But she said that "there's no question we are now focusing more on
terrorism in Colombia" since the Sept. 11 attacks that killed several
thousand in New York, Washington and Western Pennsylvania.

"Colombia has 10 percent of the terrorist groups in the world,
according to our list," she said, referring to the State Department
list of foreign terrorist organizations. Two leftist Colombian rebel
groups and a rightist paramilitary faction are on the list.

Patterson said the United Sates already had planned to aid Colombian
anti-kidnapping squads before the Sept. 11 attacks. That plan and
other antiterrorist efforts will now be "intensifying," she said.

Rebels are responsible for the majority of the more than 3,000
kidnappings reported 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, has
kidnapped and killed U.S. citizens in the South American nation.

Patterson did not put a price tag on the expanding counterterror aid
or give further details. She said the additional aid probably would
not require congressional approval.

The United States also is increasing its scrutiny of landowner-backed
paramilitary groups that are waging a massacre campaign against
suspected leftists.

Patterson said the State Department planned to cancel the visas of
five Colombians believed to be helping finance the paramilitary
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). She declined to provide
more information on the five.

She said the U.S. Embassy had information on at least 45 other
alleged AUC financiers and was checking to see whether any of them
had U.S. visas.

As part of the counterterror fight, the U.S. government also is
trying to trace foreign bank accounts managed by the guerrillas and
paramilitaries or their civilian backers, Patterson said.

U.S. antidrug aid includes training for Colombian counternarcotics
troops and donations of helicopters and crop dusters for an aerial
eradication offensive against drug plantations guarded by rebels and
paramilitaries.