On April 30, an International Day of Solidarity with the U'wa People, representatives of the League of Indigenous Sovereign Nations (LISN), accompanied by representatives of human rights and environmental organizations, will meet with Colombian Ambassador, Luis Alberto Moreno, to deliver statements denouncing the assassination of three U.S. citizens written by various indigenous, environmental and human rights groups from around the nation.

Chief Billy Redwing Tayac (Piscataway), League of Indigenous Sovereign Nations, asked the question that is on the minds of many: "What we want to know is?where is the Colombian government in the investigation process? The international indigenous community has not forgotten Ingrid, Lahe and Terry," he continued, "And we will NOT forget them. We are seeking justice for these three North American Martyrs."

In March of this year, three U.S. citizens, Ingrid Washinawatok, Lahe'ena'e Gay and Terence Freitas were assassinated while on a mission to assist the U'wa people of Colombia. These leaders dedicated their lives to fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples and are missed by their friends, colleagues and indigenous nations worldwide.

At the meeting, indigenous leaders and representatives from environmental and human rights organizations will urge the Colombian Government to:

1. Carry out an immediate, comprehensive and independent investigation of the murders; and

2. Heed the demands of the U'wa people, including:
   1. Cancellation by the Colombian government and Occidental of oil projects on U'wa traditional territory,

   2. Legalization by the Colombian government of the unified Resguardo as the next step in reconstituting traditional U'wa territory,

   3. An end to violence by all armed factions in the region.

Attending the meeting are:
Chief Billy Redwing Tayac, Piscataway, League of Indigenous Sovereign Nations (LISN)
Kenarahdiyoh, Mohawk - Six Nations, League of Indigenous Sovereign Nations (LISN)
Melina Selverston, Director, Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and Their Environment
Christina Espinel, Co-Chair, Colombia Human Rights Committee
Barbara Gerlach, Co-Chair, Colombia Human Rights Committee
Alison Giffen, Director, U.S./Colombia Coordinating Office

BOGOTA -- A leader of the FARC rebel group said it would announce the punishment to be meted out to rebels who killed three US citizens within the next two months, the Colombian Ombudsman has reported.

The rebel leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Manuel Marulanda, known as "Sureshot", refused to be drawn on what the sentence might be, Jose Fernando Castro said Saturday. That would have to await the outcome of an internal investigation, Marulanda told him. And although he admitted that the killing of the three US activists was a "grave error," he was steadfast in his refusal to hand the culprits over to Colombian or US authorities. Marulanda made the pledge in a meeting Friday with Castro in a so-called demilitarized zone designated for peace talks between the FARC, the country's largest and best-equipped insurgency, and President Andres Pastrana's government.

The bodies of Terence Freitas, 24, Laheenae Gay, 39, and Ingrid Washinawatock, 41, were found in March just inside Venezuela's border with Colombia. Their bodies were riddled with bullets and bore signs of torture. The three, members of a New York-based group that defends Andean natives' rights, were working with environmental and indigenous rights groups when they were kidnapped on February 25.

The leader of the division responsible for the executions, led by Commander Gildardo, murdered the three US citizens without consulting the FARC leadership, according to Marulanda.

In a separate development, two soldiers held captive by FARC rebels in the northwest of the country have escaped, the Colombian Ministry of Defense said Saturday. The two, who had been held since August 1998, are part of a group of some 300 soldiers and police held hostage by the FARC. The insurgents want to trade the 300 "prisoners of war" for rebels locked up in the country's prisons.

Copyright 1999 Agence France Presse

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- The U.S. State Department's top human rights official applauded Colombia for cashiering two army generals accused of supporting violent right-wing paramilitary groups who have massacred civilians.

At the same time, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Harold Koh urged the Colombian government to take even stronger measures against the feared militias -- not stopping until their top leader, Carlos Castano, is "behind bars." "We think it's time to take forceful action," Koh said in an interview aired Sunday on RCN Radio from the strife-torn city of Medellin, where he was attending a weekend conference on human rights.

Castano's national paramilitary umbrella group, the 5,000 member United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, has claimed responsibility in dozens of massacres of civilians who the militias accuse of sympathizing with leftist guerrillas. In January, Castano ordered the kidnapping of four members of a Medellin human rights organization, accusing them of clandestine guerrilla ties. He later released the four unharmed, after eliciting strong criticism from the United Nations, international human rights groups and the U.S. State Department.

Washington has been urging Colombia to move against the paramilitary groups and to ensure that all ties are severed between the militias and the country's military. In what Koh called a "step in the right direction," the government on Friday removed from active service two brigadier generals who human rights groups and the guerrillas had long accused of supporting paramilitary groups. Gen. Rito Alejo del Rio was the army's chief of operations and Gen. Fernando Millan headed its war college.

The decision could ease objections to increased U.S. military aid to Colombia while also giving a boost to stalled government-rebel peace talks.

Colombia's largest insurgent group -- the 15,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC -- pulled away from the talks soon after they began in January. At the time, the rebels said they would only negotiate if the government showed it's willingness to confront the paramilitary groups. The negotiations are set to resume Apr. 20, and many observers feel the ball is now in the FARC's court.

"President Pastrana has put a lot of effort into getting the peace process moving again. It's time for the FARC to also show that it's serious about peace," Koh said.

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.

BOGOTA -- Colombian President Andres Pastrana ordered the dismissal Friday of two senior army officers, both of whom are under investigation for alleged links to right-wing death squads.

In a terse statement, the official government news agency ANCOL said that Pastrana ordered the firing of Brig. Gens. Rito Alejo del Rio, the army's chief of operations, and Fernando Millan Perez, director of the Bogota-based Army War College. The agency gave no reason for Pastrana's decision. Both generals are targets of probes by the chief prosecutor for Allegedly sponsoring Colombia's ultra-right paramilitary groups or death squads.

The two men were also included on a list of army officers with purported ties to paramilitaries that Colombia's main Marxist rebel group turned over to the government in January, demanding their immediate dismissal from the military. The list was given to the government when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) broke off peace talks on the grounds that Pastrana was not doing enough to fight the paramilitaries.

FARC commanders agreed Thursday at a meeting with congressional leaders and Pastrana's high commissioner for peace to restart the peace process on April 20.

At a news conference late Friday, Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda sidestepped questions about the reasons for what he termed the "administrative decision" to force Alejo del Rio and Millan into retirement. But he ruled out any links to the FARC list.

"The government has no reason to take into account any charges made by groups that are outside the law," he said. "This is a decision that was made by the president after an in-depth analysis of what was appropriate for the (military) institution. That's all there is to it," he said.

Separately, the attorney general's office suspended Gen. Jaime Humberto Uscategui, commander of the second army division, from active service for three months, according to a statement released Friday evening. The statement said that Uscategui was under investigation for his alleged role in a massacre committed by paramilitary gunmen in eastern Meta province in July 1997 in which some 40 people were killed.

Alejo del Rio is a former commander of the army's 17th Brigade, which is based in the violent banana-growing region of Uraba near Colombia's border with Panama. The local media dubbed him the "Uraba Peacemaker" after rebel activity in the area subsided in late 1996 after a string of peasant massacres.

Paramilitaries have been killing leftists and suspected rebel sympathizers for more than a decade and are accused of committing most human rights violations in Colombia.

Senior army commanders routinely deny links with the paramilitaries, but human rights groups allege that they have worked together openly in many parts of the country.

About 40 percent of Colombia is under the control of the FARC and National Liberation Army, Colombia's second largest guerrilla group.

Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited

BOGOTA -- Moving against one of Colombia's most intractable problems, President Andres Pastrana on Friday cashiered two senior army officers accused of sponsoring militias involved in brutal "cleansing" campaigns against leftists.

Army Gens. Rito Alejo del Rio and Fernando Millan Perez were sent into retirement without explanation. Both officers are under investigation by the federal Prosecutor General's Office for alleged human rights abuses and could face criminal charges.

Radionet, an independent network, said Colombia's army chief, Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora, opposed the cashiering and was meeting with other members of the high command at army headquarters Friday evening.

Pastrana's move could help stalled peace talks with the nation's largest guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Talks with the rebels began Jan. 7 but stumbled after a rampage by militias that left an estimated 140 people dead. The slaughter deeply angered leaders of the insurgency. Talks were postponed until April 20.

Del Rio, chief of army operations, and Millan, who heads the Army War College, are the highest-level army officers fired for alleged human rights abuses. Del Rio gained a reputation among hard-liners for pushing leftist rebels out of the banana-growing northwestern Uraba region in the early 1990s with the brutal help of clandestine paramilitary forces. Virtual death squads, the militias executed scores of suspected leftists. Millan is linked to a secret death squad in Lebrija, in Santander state, where rich ranchers have sought to offset inroads by rebels. The death squad murdered at least 15 people. Del Rio and Millan were considered so powerful that even their army superiors reportedly feared to remove them.

Copyright 1999 Miami Herald

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombia's government relieved two army generals of their commands Friday, but denied it was caving in to guerrillas who accuse the men of supporting paramilitary groups that massacre suspected leftists. Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda said brigadier generals Rito Alejo del Rio and Fernando Millan had been removed from active service.

Human rights organizations and the guerrillas had long said the two were principal players in what they claim was an unofficial army strategy of supporting the rightist militias' dirty war against guerrilla supporters.

Lloreda denied that the decision was related to those accusations, and insisted it was not a government concession to leftist guerrillas before peace talks set to resume April 20. "It has nothing to do with the negotiations," Lloreda said. "It's a free and autonomous decision taken by the government."

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, suspended preliminary negotiations with President Andres Pastrana in January. At the time, the rebels said they would resume the talks only if Pastrana was more aggressive in reigning in the militias.

Their removal could help build support for additional U.S. assistance to the Colombian military. Washington's aid for the army is limited in part due to concerns about alleged army support for the paramilitary groups.

No criminal charges have been filed against either Alejo del Rio or Millan.

The charges against Alejo del Rio arose during the mid-1990s when he served as the army's top commander in the northern region of Uraba. Paramilitary massacres against suspected guerrilla supporters occurred as the rightists largely ousted the FARC from the zone. Prosecutors alleged Millan helped form paramilitary groups.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross said Friday it was checking reports that 15 people were massacred this week in northern Colombia. It was unclear who carried out the killings, which ocurred in a banana-producing region about 275 miles northeast of Bogota in Choco State. Rightist paramilitary groups have largely taken the area back from leftist guerrillas.

Citing army reports, Choco State secretary Higinio Mosquera said armed men arrived in three jungle hamlets Wednesday night and killed five men and a three-year-old boy. The assailants dragged nine men away. Army troops found their bullet-riddled and decapitated bodies Friday, Mosquera told the Associated Press.

SILVIA, Colombia -- Glancing from the jeep climbing up into the breathtaking Guambia Indian reserve, it's no wonder locals call their region "the Switzerland of Colombia." Blooming wildflowers and tended fields carpet a broad canyon cut down the middle by the icy, rushing waters of the Piendamo River. Steep slopes soar skyward, framing an idyllic pastoral scene in shades of green.

Sturdy men, women and children shoulder loads along the road, weave in doorways or tend onion and potato fields. Many are dressed in the traditional garb of the Guambianos: violet shawls, black bowler hats and -- for the women -- strands of white beads spiraling up their necks.

As fortunate as they are, the Guambianos are a people in danger, tribal elder Lorenzo Alemendra said. Life on the seemingly utopian reserve illustrates as much the fragile status of Colombia's Indians as it does their many impressive gains. Rapid population growth on the 40,000-acre reserve is fueling family quarrels over land, encouraging unsafe farming practices and bringing environmental degradation, he said.

Gesturing with an antique wooden scepter that symbolizes his authority, Almendra illustrated one of the problems. "Look up there, where they're planting," he said, pointing high up a nearly vertical mountain face that a Guambiano farmer had scaled to carve out a corn plot the size of a backyard swimming pool. Wheeling around, he pointed at another slope, where deforestation, rain and seismic tremors have sent torrents of brown earth dangerously toward adobe settlements below. "The entire Guambiano people are living in high-risk zones. There could be a disaster at any moment," Almendra said.

Malnutrition is also on the rise, he said. Good prices at markets outside the reserve are luring away all of the fruit and vegetables raised here, reducing local diets to potatoes and rice.

Even drug trafficking is making its way back into Guambiano life. The tribe has officially disavowed opium poppies as a crop, but the lilac-flowered plants are visible in gardens even at the reserve's entrance.

Still, there are signs of progress. Guambiano culture is being preserved through bilingual education, weaving workshops and "Stereo Guambiano," a radio station transmitting in the native language.

Dozens of families have invested in a promising economic alternative -- fish hatcheries that produce rainbow trout for tourists and nearby markets.

And after decades of short-shrifting, municipal funds have started flowing into the reserve thanks to one of the Indian group's greatest strides yet: the election two years ago of the first Guambiano mayor in Silvia.

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press

POPAYAN, Colombia -- Anger is brewing on the sprawling Indian reserves that blanket misty Andean ridges rising above this whitewashed colonial capital.

The somewhat surprising targets of the discontent are leftist rebels who having been fighting for decades in the name of Colombia's poor and oppressed. Once respected in this historically combative western region, where fierce Paez Indian warriors fought a 100-year war against Spanish conquerors, Colombia's guerrillas are now considered a danger. Indian leaders say increasing rebel incursions on the reserves are sowing violence, disrupting traditional life and drawing peace-seeking native groups into a 34-year civil war they want nothing to do with.

"What indigenous people want is to have their territory, to live peacefully, and not to be bothered," said a Paez activist, Jose Domingo Caldon. "For the guerillas -- and for the state security forces as well -- that concept is a hindrance."

At a statewide assembly of tribal authorities in late March, Indian leaders agreed to present complaints to top rebel leaders, the military and government peace negotiators.

"We can't sit passively before the actors of war and peace, because the Indian territories are being converted into battlefields," said Caldon, who is a member of the Regional Council of Indigenous People of Cauca, whose capital is Popayan.

At a preparatory meeting held on a former rich man's estate north of Popayan, now part of the 7,500-acre Ambalo reserve, Indian leaders ticked off grievances against guerrillas active in the region.

Paez official Camilo Eider Fernandez said 300 heavily armed rebels from the largest insurgent group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC -- have set up camp on his group's reserve and are ignoring elders' pleas to leave.

"As long as the guerrillas are here, we all become military targets. We're between a rock and a hard place," said Fernandez, who fears the army will view his community as FARC collaborators and take reprisals.

Rebel recruitment also has Indians upset. Alirio Morales, a Guambiano leader from the Quizgo reserve, said 10 Indian teen-agers from the area were recruited by FARC rebels in February, only to be slaughtered two weeks later in a firefight with soldiers. The youths, ages 13 to 18, were sent out "like cannon fodder," Morales said. "They hadn't even learned how to handle a rifle."'

Similar complaints are levied by embattled Indian groups in other regions of Colombia. Only the culprits are often not the rebels, but rather army units and rightist paramilitary groups who battle them for territory and popular allegiances.

Blanca Lucia Echeverria, the top Indian affairs aide to the national human rights ombudsman, said all sides are now using Indian reserves as battlefields, threatening or killing leaders suspected of aiding the enemy, and recruiting young Indians -- often by force -- as soldiers, messengers or spies.

"As the conflict escalates indigenous people are getting dragged down with it," said Echeverria, whose office reported that 63 Indian leaders were assassinated in 1997 alone. In one case, she said, FARC guerrillas killed 15 members of a tiny Indian tribe in southern Caqueta state, the Koreguaje, after accusing them of aiding rightist paramilitary groups.

Many Colombians were not surprised when an FARC rebel unit recently killed three U.S. social activists working near the Venezuelan border with the U'wa, a tribe fighting to keep oil companies off its lands. "It was nothing new," said Sen. Jesus Pinacue, a Paez leader who is one of Colombia's two Indian senators. "What's new is that they attacked American citizens."

The Indians under heaviest attack at the moment are the Embera-Katio, a tribe of about 500 families living along rivers in northern Cordoba and Antioquia states. United Nations monitors in Colombia say that since July, rightist militias and the FARC have killed and tortured Embera-Katio leaders, burned homes and forced dozens of families to flee.

Underlying many of the conflicts are the armed groups' desire to control key corridors and valuable resources located on or near Indian reserves. "We are in strategic locations -- militarily, politically and economically," said Rosalba Jimenez, a Sikuani Indian who heads the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia.

The growing harassment of Indians is a setback for a country regarded as a leader in South America in protecting native minorities. It has about 80 tribal groups estimated to encompass more than 700,000 people out of a total population of nearly 40 million.

Colombia's 1991 constitution made Indian languages official, set aside seats in the legislature for indigenous people and ratified perpetual Indian ownership and broad governing authority over reserves that cover nearly a fourth of the country's land.

More than 80 percent of Colombia's Indians now live on 479 self-managed reserves, which stretch across much of the Colombian Amazon and large pockets of its Andean highlands and Caribbean coast.

After Colombia's government begrudgingly accepted centuries-old Indian demands, indigenous groups and Marxist guerillas trying to take power increasingly have gone their separate ways.

The trend is clear in Cauca, home to nearly a fourth of Colombia's Indians and where in the 1970s indigenous groups and Marxist guerrillas were loosely allied. At the time, police working with big landholders killed Indian leaders by the dozens.

Indians in the region even had their own guerrilla movement -- Quintin Lame, named after a revered Paez Indian who led rebellions early in the century. The group laid down its arms in 1991 as the new constitution was being approved.

Today, Indian leaders say the struggle for their people's rights and welfare is long-term and nonviolent. Many look condescendingly at the rebel movements that have been fighting since the 1960s. "The guerrillas can talk about 40 years of struggle," said Alvaro Morales Tombe, an elected mayor from the Guambiano tribe."``We're talking about more than 500 years."

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press

Carlos Castano [paramilitary leader] and his men have accused the guerrillas of trying to take advantage of the demilitarized area to strengthen themselves logistically and militarily. Members of civil society have asked that minimum guidelines be established in the demilitarized zone to prevent greater problems.

Two Special Forces battalions of the Colombian United Self-Defence Groups (AUC), made up of more than 1,200 men, have been training for the past few days deep in the jungles of Uraba in Choco. They are ready to launch an offensive against the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] in the demilitarized area.

The existence of this paramilitary plan, that has become one of the main threats for the peace process, was confirmed to 'El Tiempo' by "Santander Lozada," second in command in the organization Castano heads. During a telephone conversation "Lozada" said that with this AUC offensive they hope to stem the FARC's expansion plans; he said the FARC is taking advantage of its territorial control of the demilitarized area -approximately 42,000 sq. km.- to strengthen itself logistically and militarily.

"The FARC is going to ask for extension after extension of the demilitarized area. Each time they will ask for a different area. It will become increasingly difficult for the government to comply with their demands and the government will end up giving them the country," " Lozada" said.

In the opinion of "Lozada" , the FARC is hoping to increase to 100 Fronts and is planning to establish a mobility and strategic rearguard corridor along the eastern mountain range, in the area where Meta and Cundinamarca Departments meet...

The FARC is not frightened.

The FARC has disregarded the threat. "Jairo", the FARC's security chief in San Vicente del Caguan, told 'El Tiempo'correspondents that he is not afraid of a raid by Castano's men. "If we were worried we would not be paving streets. We would be working on our security." Jairo said that the residents of the five municipalities have organized in such a way that the community juntas can keep their eyes open for any danger, warn about any goings on, and react in a timely manner. He added that the FARC is aware of the presence of paramilitaries in San Vicente del Caguan, but that it does not believe they will stage attacks in the area because family members of the army's Cazadores Battalion live there...

NEIVA, Colombia -- Opium poppies, brilliant red and pink, grow spectacularly in the mountains surrounding this city on the Rio Magdalena.

Conditions are so superb that three harvests a year of the "devil's flower" are common. Much of the heroin that killed more than 130 Central Floridians in the past five years came from these patches of clear-cut forest in the upper Andes.

Finding the poppy fields is simple. From the valley below, even a tourist 1,900 miles from home can spot crude farms among the cloud-shrouded peaks.

But getting close can be fatal, a product of Colombia's relentless war with drug lords, guerrilla armies and international crime gangs.

A decade of sporadic American aid for herbicides, crop-dusters, machine guns, grenade launchers and helicopters hasn't slowed the heroin flow. Instead, the drug is taking on an increasingly prominent role in a global underground economy.

But now, a major escalation in the fight is beginning. Orlando's notoriety as a destination for the drug and its frightening surge in teen heroin deaths has intensified the spotlight on Colombia.

"We can almost track the heroin in Orlando to specific fields here," U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, said during a recent visit with Colombia's leaders in Bogota.

Federal aid to the Colombians will increase tenfold this year. With the United States sending more dollars and new high-altitude helicopters to reach the poppy fields, the Colombian National Police pledges it will take just three years to stomp out the fastest-growing drug trade in the Western Hemisphere.

Some say that's unrealistically optimistic.

"I don't believe that for a second," said Bruce Bagley, a professor of political science at the University of Miami and an authority on U.S.-Colombian relations.

This is no vacation spot.

Given the right circumstances, Colombia could become another Balkans. It is a no-man's land, the result of an overwhelming mix of geography, drugs, politics and poverty.

More than 4,200 Colombian cops have lost their lives in a decade of violence, mostly in gunfights against the country's cocaine cartels in the early 1990s. More have died fighting Marxist guerrillas who have fought Colombia's army to a standstill.

"These are the heroes of the war on drugs. ... Every day police in Colombia die and get wounded fighting drugs destined for the United States," said Col. Leondardo Gallego, national police anti-narcotics chief.

After 35 years of guerrilla war, the government controls only half of its country. And fighting drugs isn't the only problem Colombia faces. Last year, 1,231 civilian deaths were attributed to Marxist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and government agents.

Kidnappings of Colombians and foreigners are common. Dozens of Americans have been kidnapped, with eight killed in the past five years, including three activists shot a few weeks ago.

On March 19, guerrillas kidnapped 55 people, taking 30 motorists from their cars at a roadblock on a major highway.

Neiva, a city of 350,000, sits like an oasis amid the violence. Street performers draw crowds in the central plaza. On muggy nights, the cathedral's great wooden door is opened so big fans can move a breeze.

Shops stay busy until evening. Cologne, perfumes, hand-rolled cigars and Scotch whisky compete for sales against bottles of cheap, 58-proof aguardiente and the staples of families that earn less than $5,000 a year.

Not far away, the scene changes dramatically. The main guerrilla force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -known by its Spanish initials FARC- patrols just outside city limits.

"You don't have to go that far," said police Capt. Victor Hugo Diaz, gesturing toward FARC-protected poppy fields in the mountains eight miles away. "They're right here in Neiva."

Weapons are everywhere. In Colombia, the street cops wear helmets and carry submachine guns. No one walks unarmed into the mountains. Drug agents go into the field better armed than typical U.S. SWAT teams, carrying grenade launchers and light machine guns.

At the municipal airfield, the police air unit's map locates guerrilla strongholds and drug fields. But finding the poppies is only a small part of wiping them out. Crop-dusters parked on the airstrip cannot fly unless police first secure the area to keep the low-flying planes from being shot down.

This requires choppers, because poppies grow on terrain as jagged and inhospitable as an alligator's tail. But with the fields at more than 6,500 feet - too high for many choppers - troops are forced to land lower down the mountains, then slash their way up 60-degree inclines through rain forest.

The chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Bogota, Special Agent Larry Lyons, said the Colombians are doing everything they can.

"The statistics and facts speak for themselves," Lyons said. "They didn't aggressively start eradicating opium until the end of the year. They didn't have the equipment."

Police pilots say it has been almost impossible to land safely anywhere near the poppies. Their old, single-engine choppers shudder and sway in the thin air, even carrying just three passengers.

"Our desire to work is the only way we're able to knock down poppies," said a pilot with more than 3,000 hours of flying experience. "We cross ourselves and we fly. We fly with God."

Gunfire hit 38 police aircraft last year. A dozen helicopters and three crop-dusters have been shot down. Three American crop-duster pilots have died in the past two years.

Colombian police sprayed 7,000 acres of poppies last year, about half of the crop at the moment. They sprayed another 160,000 acres of coca, from which cocaine is made.

None of this would be happening if poverty and the illegal cultivation of poppies and coca were not so closely linked. Colombia's police sound a bit like social workers when speaking about poor farmers forced by need -or gunpoint- into the drug trade.

"The farmer can make 20,000 pesos [$14] growing two loads of potatoes or 1 million pesos [$714] for a kilo of opium gum," Diaz said. "If he raises potatoes, he has to have a horse to carry them to the road. Then he has to rent a Jeep to carry them to town. Then the buyer pays him what he wants. The farmer has to take what's offered.

"But with poppies, the buyer comes to the farmer."

Both Colombian and U.S. officials accuse FARC of supporting its 15,000 troops by charging a 10 percent protection fee from the traffickers who organize the farms. The fees and hostage ransoms raise an estimated $200 million and more a year.

FARC, which maintains two Web sites on the Internet to post its messages and counter government reports, denies it. The group regularly accuses the government of profiting from the drug trade.

"This is is part of the psychological warfare of U.S. and Colombian armed forces, since they have lost a great deal of the military initiative in the field," a FARC spokeswoman said.

At the new Police Intelligence Center in Bogota, a map shows smuggling routes perfected over three decades: marijuana in the 1970s, cocaine in the 1980s and heroin in the 1990s.

Sixty groups may be smuggling heroin to the United States, Lyons said, but it's impossible to be sure.

Here, police keep tabs on 143 rings with about 11,000 members. The two best-known, the Cali and Medellin cartels, controlled Colombia's drug scene until police dismantled them during the mid-1990s.

Now, gangs from Chechnya and the former Soviet Union are trying to jump in. Three Russian-speaking drug dealers were arrested in Cali last fall.

But one group or another has always fought to control the vast profits of the drug trade.

In the south, FARC governs a region equivalent in size to a quarter of Florida. Its influence extends well beyond the borders of this "restricted zone."

In the northeast, the smaller National Liberation Army controls vast areas.

In the northwest, paramilitary groups financed by local landowners clash with guerrillas and kill anyone suspected of supporting them.

"Our biggest concern is that civil war will break out here," said a top intelligence officer in Bogota, gesturing toward a map of the three main mountain ranges in the center of the country.

And this fight can be as close as the next block. Authorities recently busted a lab in Neiva that had been processing about 7 pounds of heroin a week.

A kilogram (2.2 pounds) sells for about $8,500 here. By the time it reaches Bogota, 200 miles north, the price has risen to $12,000. On arrival in Orlando, it will sell for as much as $100,000.

At that rate, this single lab could make enough heroin to generate $15 million a year.

The route to the big money begins on the trails and back roads out of Neiva. Smugglers can bypass checkpoints on major roads and still reach Bogota in a day.

The discovery of the heroin lab last month was a small success for the country's 2,500 anti-narcotics officers, who are as busy as 1920s revenue agents busting whiskey stills in Kentucky.

Recognized by their Australian-style snap brim hats, they destroyed 197 drug labs in 1998. They seized more than 56 tons of cocaine and cocaine base, 314 tons of coca leaves, 56 tons of marijuana and about 900 pounds of heroin and morphine.

The victories come at immense cost. One of every five anti-narcotics officers is injured during a three-year tour.

A recent victim, 23-year-old patrolman Samuel Figueroa, was severely injured when chemicals exploded during a bust at a cocaine lab. He suffered burns over 60 percent of his body and scorched his lungs.

Lying in an intensive-care bed at the National Police Central Hospital in Bogota, Figueroa said he wants to return to duty as soon as possible.

Figueroa, who earns about $350 a month, will be lucky to work again. By the time he leaves the hospital, the poppy fields of Neiva will have earned their backers millions more.

BOGOTA -- Authorities have ordered the arrest of the brother of one of Colombia's top Marxist rebel leaders for his alleged role in the recent kidnapping and murder of three Americans, judicial officials said on Friday.

Spokesmen for Prosecutor-General Alfonso Mendez said the warrant for the arrest of German Briceno, alias "Grannobles", was issued on Thursday on suspicion that he personally ordered the crime that drew an international outcry.

Briceno is the brother of Jorge Briceno, No. 2 leader and chief military strategist of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He is also one of the FARC's top regional commanders in the rural area of northeastern Colombia where the U.S. citizens were abducted on Feb. 25.

In the days after Terence Freitas, 24, Ingrig Washinawatok, 41, and Laheenae Gay, 39, were kidnapped, the army intercepted a series of radio conversations in which a voice authorities identified as that of Grannobles allegedly ordered other guerrillas to kill them.

The bullet-riddled corpses of the Americans, who had been helping U'wa Indians defend their ancestral lands from encroachment by a U.S. oil company, were found dumped just across Colombia's border with Venezuela on March 4.

The FARC, the hemisphere's largest and oldest guerrilla army, initially denied any involvement in the kidnap-murders. But it later blamed them on a rogue, mid-ranking field commander who it said had acted with three other subordinates without the knowledge or consent of senior rebel leaders.

The FARC has defied U.S. demands that it surrender the killers for extradition but said it will put them on trial before a rebel war council, which ultimately could sent them before a firing squad.

The FARC has also specifically denied any involvement by Grannobles in the killings. But Thursday's warrant gave credence to previous claims, including a statement by Defence Minister Rodrigo Lloreda, that put the blame squarely on his shoulders and suggested a high-level cover-up by the rebels.

A public admission that the brother of one of the FARC's top leaders was behind the killings would be a serious embarrassment at a time when the group is striving to boost its political image at home and abroad.

Jorge Briceno, known by his nom de guerre as "Mono Jojoy", is a member of the FARC's seven-man General Secretariat. He is widely seen as the mostly likely successor to the group's veteran commander-in-chief, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda.

In one of the army's radio intercepts, Jorge Briceno can allegedly be heard talking to his brother, Grannobles, about the devastating political impact the killings were going to have on the rebel group, and telling his brother to come up with "any name" to put forward as the murderer of the Americans.

"This is the biggest political screw-up of all," he said. "This is a mistake from hell."

BOGOTA -- Washington's envoy to Colombia on Thursday ruled out any fresh talks between U.S. officials and Marxist rebels until they brought to justice the guerrillas who recently kidnapped and killed three Americans.

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) chiefs met with U.S. State Department officials in Costa Rica in December to discuss a plan to substitute illicit drug crops for legal alternatives in rebel-controlled areas of Colombia.

But those initial contacts, which took place against the backdrop of tentative peace negotiations between the Colombian government and rebels, were abruptly halted when the FARC abducted three American activists.

Terence Freitas, of Oakland, California, Ingrid Washinawatok, a resident in New York and Laheenae Gay, of Hawaii, were snatched on Feb. 25 while helping U'wa Indians in northeast Colombia to protect their tribal lands from oil exploration.

"There is no chance of continuing those contacts unless the FARC does all in its power to bring those responsible to justice," U.S. ambassador Curtis Kamman told reporters.

Just before the killings of the Americans, senior rebel commander Raul Reyes had called for fresh talks on drug crop substitution plans.

In rejecting that proposal on Thursday, Kamman said the killers must be handed over to Colombian justice officials rather than subjected to the FARC's own brand of revolutionary justice.

The State Department initially called for the murderers to be extradited for trial to the United States. The FARC rejected those calls, saying it would handle the matter itself and could even send those responsible before a firing squad.

The FARC, the hemisphere's oldest and largest rebel force, initially denied the kidnap-murders but then blamed them on rogue, mid-ranking field commander operating without the consent of senior rebel leaders.

U.S. and Colombian authorities accuse the FARC, which is included on a U.S. list of "terrorist" organisations, of close ties to the drug trade.

The FARC denies those accusations and says it is protecting peasants who grow illegal cash crops out of economic hardship.

All along the United States said it would not finance any crop substitution programmes in rebel areas until the FARC laid down its weapons. Peace talks between the FARC and President Andres Pastrana's administration have been suspended but the guerrillas have said they will not disarm even after an eventual deal is struck.

By Yadira Ferrer
March 21, 1999

BOGOTA, Mar 21 (IPS) - The killing of three U.S. indigenous rights activists working with the U'wa people of Colombia demonstrated to what extent the ethnic group's reserve, involved in a struggle over oil drilling, has turned into a war zone.

U.S. citizens Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay were killed Mar 5 by a commando of the insurgent Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) for having "entered the U'wa region without authorisation " by the guerrillas, according to the rebel group.

But the leadership of FARC - the largest insurgent organisation involved in Colombia's decades-old armed conflict - said it was not directly responsible for the murders, which it described as an "error ".

Freitas, Washinawatok and Gay, whose bullet-riddled corpses were found 30 metres across the border in Venezuela, had been invited by the U'wa to study the community's model of education and cultural preservation.

The three activists were participating in a traditional culture education project organised through Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, a Hawaii-based indigenous rights organisation.

They were also involved in the fight against oil exploration on the U'wa's traditional land.

Freitas, a 24-year-old environmental biologist, had founded the U'wa Defence Working Group in California to assist the U'wa in bringing their case against U.S. oil giant Occidental Petroleum to the Organisation of American States (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Hernan Correa, an environmentalist with the Centre of Regional and Economic Studies in Colombia, told IPS that the incident demonstrated that the U'wa reserve had become a war zone, where the indians were no longer only fighting Occidental, but also found themselves defending their territory from FARC.

Correa said that "armed actors " had become active in the region, due to Occidental's plans to drill for oil in the area known as the "Samore Bloc ", which the U'wa consider part of their territory.

Under a licence issued by the Ministry of the Environment, Occidental planned to begin prospecting for oil in the 2,000- hectare Samore Bloc. The U'wa, however, argue that oil exploitation would cause settlement of the area by outsiders.

U'wa leader Roberto Cobaria said "the basis of traditional thought would collapse, the Werjayas (priests) would not sing or pray, and there would be no more dances. The reasons for the existence of the U'wa people would disappear. "

The indigenous group believes oil is "the blood of the earth, the essence of the underworld, and the element that sustains the gardens and lakes and prevents earthquakes. "

According to the indigenous group's beliefs, Sira (the eternal father) leaves the "ruiria " (oil in the U'wa tongue) in the earth to be cared for and not exploited.

The group has even threatened to commit mass suicide if Occidental begins exploration in the Samore Bloc. In the late 17th century, an entire U'wa community jumped off a cliff to avoid being converted to Christianity by Spanish missionaries.

Several analysts say the violence has worsened in Colombia due to the development of oil activity since the second half of the 1980s.

The National Liberation Army (ELN) - the second largest rebel group - bombs oil pipelines to protest the presence of multinational oil companies, FARC levies ''taxes'' in order to allow the companies to operate, and right-wing paramilitary units have installed themselves in the area to fight the insurgents.

The U'wa community lives in the eastern foothills of the Andes mountains in Colombia, a region of great environmental value, where the 5,000 to 6,000 members of the indigenous group maintain a subsistence-level economy based on agriculture and livestock, which protects the forests.

The U'wa territory encompasses two natural parks, Cocuy and Tama, as well as a vast area of bleak, snowy plateaus in the foothills of the Andes.

Correa said the territory "is a link in continental ecological connections involving 'Orinoquia' (the plains in the basin of the Orinoco river), the Andes and the Caribbean. "

The U'wa dispute with Occidental demonstrates that spaces for the protection of those "who are culturally different, like indigenous peoples and those who personify the nation's ethnic and cultural diversity " are not being respected in Colombia, he added.

Occidental was awarded a prospecting licence in February 1995. But it suspended its plans in the face of the protest movement mounted by the indigenous group and non-governmental organisations supporting their struggle.

In 1997, a report drafted by the Organisation of American States and Harvard University backed the position of the U'wa, and urged Occidental to call off its operations until the lawsuit brought by the U'wa in defence of their territorial rights was resolved.

The oil company voluntarily brought its activities to a halt, and last year renounced 75 percent of the area in which it had been allowed to explore for oil. But it submitted to the Ministry of the Environment a study on environmental impact in the rest of the Samore Bloc.

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