NYT: Andes Battle: Right vs. Left vs. Civilians vs. Troops

        [NOTE: The signs are all there: public opinion is being
        prepared for a military intervention in Colombia.   -DG]

                        ===============================================
                        "As the Colombian situation deteriorates and it
                        becomes clear that it cannot be resolved simply
                        by the Colombians, that may bring neighboring
                        countries together to work out a coordinated,
                        sustained response."
_________________       ===============================================
NEW YORK TIMES

Friday, 26 March 1999

                Andes Battle: Right vs. Left
                  vs. Civilians vs. Troops
                ----------------------------

QUITO, Ecuador -- A leftist member of Congress here is assassinated just a
few yards from the Capitol building, and Colombians with ties to that
country's right-wing death squads are arrested for the crime. A wealthy
Venezuelan businessman is kidnapped in Caracas and ends up in the hands a
left-wing Colombian guerrillas.

For more than three decades, Colombia has endured a conflict in which both
sides regard civilians as targets. But the scope of the strife seems to be
widening.

"This is clearly becoming a major and much wider regional problem,
spilling over Colombia's borders," said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow
at the policy analysis group Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "As
the Colombian situation deteriorates and it becomes clear that it cannot
be resolved simply by the Colombians, that may bring neighboring countries
together to work out a coordinated, sustained response."

Since at least 1996, units of the Peasant Self-Defense Forces, Colombia's
main right-wing paramilitary group have made forays into Panama, attacking
villages and killing civilians in the remote Darien province.

But the assassination of Jaime Hurtado, a leader of an Ecuadorean
Marxist-Leninist party called the Popular Democratic Movement, on a busy
downtown street here Feb. 17 marked a new level of violence.

Hurtado, a native of Esmeraldas, a port town that has long been a center
of contraband trade with Colombia, was gunned down with two associates as
he left Congress. Several Colombians living here were quickly arrested.

In an interview this month with the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo, Carlos
Castano, the main paramilitary leader, stopped short of taking
responsibility for Hurtado's death. He attributed the killing to "an
international military support front" sympathetic to his group, and said
it was justified because Hurtado was "the biggest supplier of arms" to the
main guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

In the interview, Castano threatened to extend the conflict into
Venezuela, Colombia's eastern neighbor and traditional rival. He accused
Venezuela's new populist president, Hugo Chavez, of "throwing open his
arms to the guerrillas" since taking office in February, and said that
while it was acceptable for Chavez to offer Venezuelan territory as a site
for peace talks, "he cannot convert his country into a refuge for
guerrillas."

Chavez "is going to have a problem, because we are going to apply hot
pursuit there, and there are going to be confrontations," Castano warned.
"If in Caracas they are going to offer refuge to the big chiefs so they
can plan their violent offensives against our country from over there,
then our self-defense will extend to Caracas."

Within hours, the Venezuelan government responded emphatically: If
Castano's forces try to cross the border, they will be "taught a lesson,"
said Interior Minister Luis Miquilena warned.

For their part, left-wing guerrillas also seem to have expanded their
theater of action. In a case that shocked Venezuelans, a prominent Caracas
businessman was recently kidnapped by local criminals and "sold" to
Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army,
which returned him to his family after being paid a ransom of several
million dollars.

Chavez, a former army paratrooper who led a violent, unsuccessful coup
attempt in 1992, has declared himself neutral in the Colombian conflict.
But Colombian President Andres Pastrana canceled a meeting with Chavez on
their border two weeks ago after
Chavez suggested that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia now
controlled enough territory to be formally recognized as a "belligerent"
force under international law.

When Chavez was elected in December, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
welcomed him, calling the vote "a victory for the people" over a corrupt
"party machine." In an interview with Reuters at that time, Joaquin Gomez,
a senior guerrilla commander, described Chavez's rise to power as "a moral
stimulus to all those patriotic soldiers in both Colombia and the rest of
Latin America."

Since then, Chavez has provided a safe haven for the National Liberation
Army's No. 2 leader, Antonio Garcia, in Maracaibo. It is not known if the
guerrilla group agreed to cease its operations in Venezuela in return for
asylum, but rebel leaders did hold two rounds of inconclusive peace talks
with Colombian officials in Caracas in February.

The deepening tensions have also contributed to a worsening of relations
between Colombia and Peru. In a speech to the Inter-American Defense
College in Washington in February, President Alberto Fujimori of Peru
reproached his Colombian counterpart for
beginning peace talks with the rebels, saying he "finds the dialogue to be
incomprehensible."

"We are observing with deep concern the growth of the old and illegal
armed groups in the neighboring sister republic of Colombia," Fujimori
told his audience, United States and Latin American military and civilian
officials. "This alarming situation worries us because it can cease to be
a national problem and become a threat to regional security."

In the speech, later criticized by Colombian officials, Fujimori noted:
"There is also a well-known ideological and practical link between the
Colombian guerrillas and Peruvian terrorist organizations. It is a reality
that these groups violate the sovereignty of neighboring countries and
encourage the internationalization of the armed struggle."

Military officials say Fujimori recently sent troops to the border.

For their part, Brazil and Colombia have been trying to negotiate a border
cooperation agreement, and are to meet next month to discuss problems
along their remote and lightly defended frontier. A Brazilian official
involved in the talks said his government is concerned about "guaranteeing
our territory" against incursions by guerrillas and drug traffickers, who
are often one and the same.

To Hurtado's surviving associates here, all of these recent developments
suggest that his assassination was, in the words of Ciro Guzman, the
party's national director, "a crime of state."

Both Ecuadorean and U.S. officials have denied any role in the killing,
but Guzman maintains that strategic interests lie behind the
assassination.

"They want to justify the formation of a multinational army of Ecuadorean,
Peruvian and Brazilian forces to fight a regional war in support of the
Colombian army," Guzman said.

"Such an army would have the full backing of the United States, but it
would pulverize the Colombian people and convert Colombia into a new
Vietnam."

        Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
_______________________________________________________________________
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