Source: Reuters
Pubdate: 20 Oct 1997

U.S. drug czar slams Colombian rebels

By Tom Brown

BOGOTA (Reuters)  U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey said Monday that Marxist
rebels were working in an ``unholy alliance'' with powerful drug gangs that
posed an ''unprecedented threat'' to Colombia's democracy.

McCaffrey, who arrived in Colombia Sunday for a threeday visit, spoke
after meeting for about 45 minutes behind closed doors with President
Ernesto Samper, whom he has derided in the past as ``an accomplice of
international criminals'' because of alleged ties to the Cali drug cartel.

However, in the keynote speech of his controversial visit McCaffrey, a
former army general, set his sights on guerrillas instead of Samper.

``With the unholy alliance between the cocaine industry and the
revolutionary guerrilla movement, the drugtrafficker threat to Colombian
civil democratic society has again ratcheted up,'' McCaffrey said in his
address at a Bogota military academy.

``The melding of revolution and international criminal organizations have
created an unprecedented threat to democracy, the rule of law, and the very
fabric of society,'' he added.

Senior Colombian police and military officials have argued repeatedly in
the past that the country's main guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) has become a key player in the drug trade and
that it was now virtually impossible to draw the line between
counternarcotics and counterinsurgency operations in Colombia.

U.S. officials have played down that allegation in the past. But McCaffrey
  who appeared to be setting the stage for calls for an increase in U.S.
aid to Colombia to curb the rebels' growing military might  said both the
FARC and smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) were infested with
''narcocorrupted cadres that have turned revolution into little more than
a grab for drug dollars.

``We are now convinced that the majority of the FARC and a significant
faction of the ELN participate in and benefit from drug trafficking. The
cocaine trade appears to be pumping about $60 million per year into the
coffers of these revolutionary/criminal enterprises,'' he said.

Eduardo Gamarra, a Floridabased Latin American political analyst, said
McCaffrey was deliberately blurring the lines between the war on drugs and
the longrunning fight against rebels.

``What U.S. policy is angling toward is a greater presence of U.S.
counterinsurgency advisers in Colombia,'' he said, backing rebel claims
that a large number of U.S. military advisers were already providing
antiguerrilla assistance in Colombia.

Samper, who hands over power in 10 months, has been severely weakened since
the start of his administration by charges that he received about $6
million in drug money to finance his campaign.

Juan Carlos Esguerra, Colombia's ambassador to Washington, sat in on
McCaffrey's talks with Samper and described them to reporters as ``frank,
open and cordial.'' But he conceded that McCaffrey had insisted that Samper
use whatever influence he still has to win congressional passage of a bill
that would lift Colombia's sixyearold ban on the extradition of drug
lords and other criminals with no exceptions.

Taking a thinlyveiled jab at Samper, McCaffrey stressed in his speech that
``narcoticsrelated corruption ... reaches into the highest levels of the
system'' in Colombia.

Alluding to possible U.S. economic sanctions, which could be clamped on
Colombia if Washington decertifies it as a trustworthy ally in the drug war
for a third straight year in 1998, he added that extradition was the single
most important tool in the fight against international crime. The like of
it, he said, ``continues to be a major sticking point in bilateral ties
between Colombia and the United States.''

Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.