Pubdate: Sat, 02 Dec 2000
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190
Fax: (408) 271-3792
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post
Bookmark: Colombia http://www.mapinc.org/colombia.htm

AMERICANS POSSIBLE TARGETS IN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Police in a violence-ridden Colombian town defused two 
bombs a few hours before a visit Thursday by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., 
and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, authorities reported Friday.

A Colombian police colonel said the bombs might have been rigged for an 
assassination attempt, citing the arrest of a man said to belong to a 
leftist guerrilla group hostile to U.S. military aid for the Colombian 
government. But other U.S. and Colombian officials said there was no proof 
the American visitors were the intended targets.

Wellstone and Patterson, who took up her post three months ago, traveled to 
Barrancabermeja, an oil-refining town 150 miles north of Bogota, as part of 
Wellstone's visit to review anti-drug activities in Colombia. Leftist 
guerrillas and privately funded paramilitary groups have clashed regularly 
in and around the city, battling for control of a lucrative drug trade that 
is the target of a new U.S. military aid package.

Jose Miguel Villar, a police colonel, told reporters Friday that two 
powerful, shrapnel-filled bombs were discovered near a route Wellstone and 
Patterson could have taken from the airport to a brief meeting with human 
rights advocates in what is perhaps Colombia's most dangerous city. The 
explosives were rigged to a detonator and police said the man they found in 
possession of the bombs was a suspected urban commando of the National 
Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's second-largest leftist militant group.

But Colombian authorities and the State Department said later Friday that 
they could not say if the bombs were intended for Patterson and Wellstone. 
The two U.S. officials moved from the airport to the city center by 
helicopter as a precaution. "Such explosive devices are frequently found in 
the area of Barrancabermeja, an area of extensive activity by illegally 
armed groups in Colombia," the U.S. Embassy in Bogota said in a statement.

Wellstone's visit came as Colombian guerrillas, comprising perhaps 20,000 
armed members, wage a violent campaign against the government's $7.5 
billion anti-drug program known as Plan Colombia. The United States is 
contributing $1.3 billion to the effort, the majority of it to help the 
army and national police force eradicate drug crops protected and taxed by 
leftist guerrillas and their right-wing paramilitary rivals.

Across the country, particularly in strategic drug-producing crossroads 
such as Barrancabermeja, the armed groups have concentrated their numbers 
and increased their strikes against civilian and military targets in recent 
weeks. But the situation is most serious in the south, where Colombia's 
largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or 
FARC, has paralyzed much of the country's richest coca region.

Both the FARC and the ELN, although they are rivals who operate 
independently, say their tactics are prompted by a U.S. military package 
that they believe threatens Colombia's independence and could broaden the 
long civil war.

While the assassination of senior U.S. officials might weaken American 
support of its Colombia policy, Wellstone would make an odd choice for a 
target. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wellstone was 
part of a small minority that opposed the aid package, arguing that much of 
the money should be spent on programs to reduce domestic drug consumption.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager