Pubdate: Fri, 22 Feb 2002
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A17
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Karen DeYoung

Colombia To Get Aid In Fighting Insurgents

U.S. WILL INCREASE INTELLIGENCE-SHARING

The Bush administration hopes to begin providing the Colombian military 
with sophisticated intelligence information on guerrilla insurgents within 
"a matter of days," authorized in part under a presidential anti-terrorism 
directive adopted after Sept. 11, administration officials said yesterday.

In a statement issued last night after it was cleared with the

traveling White House in China, the State Department said, "We are looking 
at specific ways to continue to support the Government of Colombia during 
this difficult period." It cited "increased terrorist attacks" in recent 
weeks by the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Colombia has urgently asked the United States to provide intelligence 
information, including intercepts from guerrilla satellite telephones and 
other communications as well as aerial surveillance and satellite 
photographs of FARC installations, so it can plot rebel movements and 
anticipate attacks.

U.S. intelligence-sharing with Colombia is restricted to counternarcotics 
activities under a directive, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000, 
that prohibits intelligence involvement with Colombia's larger guerrilla 
war. Congressional restrictions similarly limit the use of U.S.-provided 
military equipment in Colombia.

But government lawyers are examining whether the sharp escalation of the 
Colombian conflict this week, and President Andres Pastrana's labeling 
Wednesday of the FARC as "terrorists" for the first time, provide 
maneuvering room.

The lawyers are looking at whether expanded intelligence cooperation can be 
allowed under a National Security Presidential Directive, signed by 
President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, that provided new 
guidelines for sharing U.S. intelligence in the worldwide hunt for terrorists.

Although the U.S. government long ago branded the FARC a terrorist 
organization, its activities have been confined to Colombia. At the same 
time, Pastrana had been reluctant to call the guerrillas terrorists as long 
as he was conducting peace negotiations with them, and Congress had made 
clear it would not support direct U.S. involvement in a foreign 
counterinsurgency effort with echoes of Vietnam.

Congress has repeatedly imposed restrictions on military assistance on the 
grounds that the Colombian military violates human rights and is closely 
allied with the other major party to the Colombian conflict -- an outlawed 
anti-guerrilla paramilitary army held responsible for numerous civilian 
massacres and other rights violations.

Clinton's directive on intelligence-sharing, signed at the launch of the 
current counternarcotics assistance program, was strongly supported by the 
CIA, which shared congressional concerns and did not want to be tied to 
such abuses.

But events this week appear to have altered a number of calculations. 
Pastrana declared an end to three years of

inconclusive peace talks with the FARC on Wednesday, after the guerrillas 
hijacked a commercial airliner, forced it to land on a deserted Colombian 
highway and kidnapped a Colombian senator who was aboard.

He ordered the military to reoccupy a 16,000-square-mile area in the 
south-central part of the country that he had ceded to the guerrillas as a 
"safe zone" during peace talks. Colombian Air Force fighters pounded 
guerrilla installations inside the zone on Wednesday night, while ground 
forces massed around its borders in apparent preparation for routing as 
many as 8,000 rebels believed to be inside.

Civilian officials in the Pentagon have headed a faction that contends the 
United States should drop its distinction between counternarcotics 
assistance and counterinsurgency cooperation, especially since the 
guerrillas are deeply involved in the drug trade. If not enthusiastic 
support, that argument has gained new acquiescence in other parts of the 
administration as Colombian democracy is increasingly threatened.

"There's a general feeling that this would be the right thing to do," 
another senior official said yesterday of the intelligence-sharing plan. 
"But we want to make sure that it's a legal thing to do."

He predicted that the decision would be made "in a matter of days . . . not 
weeks," as soon as Bush and his senior foreign policy advisers return from 
Asia this weekend.
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