Pubdate: Thu, 30 Nov 2000
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  200 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281
Fax: (212) 416-2658
Website: http://www.wsj.com/

COLOMBIA GUNMEN KILL MAYOR IN MAJOR COCA-GROWING REGION

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Only an hour after he described the "terror" 
afflicting his town, a mayor in Colombia's major coca-growing region was 
shot dead Wednesday by gunmen riding on a motorcycle.

The killing of Carlos Rosas, mayor of Orito, comes at the same time that 
U.S.-backed Colombian forces are preparing a major counternarcotics 
offensive in the southern region.

The gunmen shot Mr. Rosas four times at point-blank range as he walked out 
of his home, said Alvaro Salas, an official of the Putumayo state 
government, which encompasses Orito. The gunmen escaped and their 
identities were unknown.

The daylight assassination comes just a day after the mayor-elect of 
another Putumayo town, Sibundoy, was shot and wounded, and two weeks after 
a bomb in a main town, Puerto Asis, exploded, killing two people and 
wounding 17.

State officials on Wednesday were holding an emergency security council 
meeting to discuss ways to dampen spiraling violence in the region, which 
lies about 320 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota.

The army is largely in control of Orito, Puerto Asis and other towns and 
says it is battling to retake control of outlying areas from leftist rebels 
who have imposed a road blockade in Putumayo. Most of the world's coca, 
from which cocaine is made, is grown in the southern state.

Meanwhile, members of a right-wing paramilitary group, many of whose 
members are former government soldiers, are fighting the rebels for control 
of Putumayo's lucrative coca fields, which the armed groups tax, generating 
huge profits. The paramilitaries have also been killing suspected guerrilla 
sympathizers.

"The truth is that there is great uncertainty when supplies don't arrive, 
and when the sick suffer, it becomes desperate," Mr. Rosas said in an 
interview Wednesday on Radionet. "Furthermore, corpses have been appearing, 
cars are being burned, and this terrifies everyone."

An hour after speaking in the national radio broadcast, Mr. Rosas was dead.

U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey, meanwhile, said momentum for the anti-drug 
offensive is building. The so-called Push Into Southern Colombia is part of 
a $1.3 billion American aid package.

The plan is financing training of Colombian army troops by U.S. special 
forces at Larandia army base in southern Colombia and delivery of dozens of 
U.S. combat helicopters, most of which will be based at Tres Esquinas, 
another Colombian army base in the south.

"Huge construction programs [are] going on in Tres Esquinas to extend the 
runway; helicopters [are] showing up in Larandia; aircraft are going to 
show up in Tres Esquinas in the coming months," Mr. McCaffrey, a former 
U.S. Army general, told reporters in Washington Tuesday.
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