ASSOCIATED PRESS

Friday, 7 August 1998


                Colombia Reels From Rebel Attacks
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BOGOTA -- A huge rebel offensive in the run-up to Colombia's presidential
inauguration today demonstrates how strong the leftist insurgents have
become and how difficult it will be to make peace.

The government said 71 soldiers and police were killed and 85 wounded by
rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the
National Liberation Army, or ELN. Another 100 security-force members were
missing and 198 rebels had been killed, the government said.

A FARC spokesman gave sharply different figures in a radio interview
Thursday. Alfonso Cano said rebels killed at least 143 soldiers and police
and took 133 as prisoners, and that only 15 guerrillas died.

The onslaught was a rude welcome for Andres Pastrana, who was to be sworn
in as president today. He met in the jungles of Colombia last month with
top FARC leaders and agreed to start peace talks with the 34-year-old rebel
group by November.

``Sometimes you have to work for peace in the midst of war,'' an undeterred
Pastrana said Wednesday.

In the latest offensive, which tapered off Wednesday, rebels set off bombs,
attacked oil pipelines and a hydroelectric dam, and hammered army and
police bases in about half the country with rockets, mortars and grenades.

In the most devastating action, rebels overran an important southern
anti-drug base in Miraflores, killing or dragging away dozens of soldiers
and police as possible bargaining chips.

Army leaders said they repelled the offensive and called it a military and
political failure for the rebels. Colombian military analysts disagreed.

``It's the largest disaster in the history of the insurgency, and it comes
on top of an entire chain of disasters over the past three years,'' said
Alfredo Rangel, a former presidential national security advisor.

In March, the rebels killed 62 soldiers and seized 43 others in an attack
blamed by army leaders on intelligence failures -- much like the failure to
anticipate this week's guerrilla actions.

Colombia's 120,000-member army has been unable to counter an increasingly
bold and well-trained rebel force that has gained wealth and firepower in
part through revenues from ransom kidnappings and ``war taxes'' on cocaine
production in rebel-controlled areas.

The guerrillas have gone in recent years from occasional ambushes of small
groups of soldiers to assaults by hundreds of rebels on heavily fortified
army and police bases, such as the Miraflores base overrun Monday.

The challenge for Pastrana, observers say, will be to reform and strengthen
an ineffective and demoralized military.

``The guerrillas at this moment have many more cards to negotiate with,''
Rangel said. ``They have much more bargaining power for having carried out
this demonstration of force.''

        Copyright 1998 Associated Press