Pubdate: Wed, 04 Apr 2001
Source: Reuters
Copyright: 2001 Reuters Limited
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/364
Author: Luis Jaime Acosta

COLOMBIAN ARMY WARNS REBELS OF DEPORTATION TO U.S.

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian military officials on Wednesday 
accused the country's top rebel force of controlling the Andean nation's 
massive drug trade and warned rebel leaders they faced deportation to the 
United States.

The comments by Colombia's army chief and defense minister are believed to 
be the armed forces' strongest denunciation yet of alleged large-scale drug 
dealing by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

"We know that the FARC grow coca, that they deal with chemical precursors, 
they own drug laboratories and airstrips, that no drug trafficker operates 
without their permission and that they sell (cocaine) to international 
cocaine cartels," Army chief Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora told a news conference.

"All this has been proved. All we need now is to find these FARC bandits 
selling cocaine in the streets of New York City."

U.S. and Colombian officials have said the 17,000-member FARC makes 
millions of dollars every year in drug profits -- financing a 37-year-old 
war which has killed nearly 40,000 civilians in the last decade.

President Andres Pastrana, who is engaged in two-year peace talks with the 
FARC, a left-leaning peasants' army, has accused it of profiting from vast 
coca plantations in rebel-held areas in southern Colombia, but has declined 
to brand the rebels a "drug cartel."

Colombia is the world's No. 1 cocaine producer, exporting an average of 500 
tons every year, mostly to the United States. The FARC, which admits 
receivingprotection money from drug producers, has denied it is involved in 
large-scale drug trafficking.

On Wednesday, Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez warned FARC rebels 
they could be deported to the United States to face charges of drug 
trafficking.

"If somebody is involved in drug trafficking he is a drug trafficker and he 
faces being extradited (to the United States). If, as a defense, the drug 
trafficker says he is a guerrilla member, that is no excuse," Ramirez told 
a news conference.

In 1997, Colombia's Congress passed a law that allows Bogota to extradite 
Colombian drug traffickers to the United States.

In an interview posted on the rebels' Web site on Wednesday, FARC spokesman 
Carlos Antonio Lozada said accusations implicating the FARC in drug 
trafficking were intended "to prepare the ground for growing involvement of 
U.S. military advisers'' in Colombia.

The United States has earmarked $1 billion in mostly military aid to stamp 
out the cocaine industry in Colombia -- an aid the FARC has criticized as 
"Yanqui imperialism."
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D