Colombian paramilitary leader to intensify war against leftists: US interview Agence France Presse 29 August 1999 This Month's News | CSN Home

-- Colombian right-wing paramilitary leader Ramon Isaza said he will intensify the campaign against leftist rebels, Newsweek magazine reports in its Monday edition, despite talk of peace from other paramilitary leaders,

"Our mission is to remove the subversives from any part of the country where they exist," said Isaza, 59, who founded one of Colombia's earliest paramilitary groups in 1978.

Isaza's group and eight other right-wing paramilitary groups have united their forces in the Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC), the country's main paramilitary organization.

Isaza's effort to intensify the fight against rebels in a country scarred by civil war for more than three decades comes at the same time that the government of Andres Pastrana has tried to make peace with the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

His statements also appear to clash with a message given by AUC leader Carlos Castano Tuesday.

"I don't want one more person killed. I am ready to order a ceasefire tomorrow, whenever FARC guerrillas say so," Carlos Castano said in a radio interview.

According to the Colombian army the country's paramilitary groups -- which together have some 10,000 fighters -- are responsible for 361 murders in the first seven months of this year.