WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
             ISSUE #445, AUGUST 9, 1998
  NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499


*2. REBEL OFFENSIVE GREETS NEW COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT

Andres Pastrana Arango of the Conservative Party was sworn in as
Colombia's president on Aug. 7, ending 12 years of Liberal Party
rule. Pastrana beat Liberal candidate Horacio Serpa Uribe in
runoff elections on June 21 [see Update 439]; he replaces Ernesto
Samper Pizano, whose term was plagued with charges that he
accepted money from drug traffickers during his 1994 election
campaign.

Pastrana has promised to bring an end to Colombia's more than 40-
year old armed conflict between the government and leftist
rebels. "As president of the republic I assume the... leadership
to build peace," he said at the inauguration ceremony, surrounded
by 4,000 guests from about 100 nations--and 4,000 security
agents. Pastrana vowed to create a peace fund--supported by the
government, foreign countries and institutions and wealthy
Colombians--to provide investment money for areas of the country
torn apart by war. [Washington Post 8/8/98; El Nuevo Herald
8/8/98] Colombia's economy is in its worst state in a decade:
unemployment, inflation and interest rates have increased
dramatically, and the government deficit is at $5 billion.
[Agence France-Presse 8/6/98]

The country's main rebel groups spent the last week of Samper's
term launching a major offensive, which many see as a show of
strength designed to improve their position in peace
negotiations. [WP 8/8/98] The government said 71 soldiers and
police were killed and 85 wounded in the offensive by rebels of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP
or FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN); another 100
security force members are missing, and 198 rebels were killed,
according to the government. [Associated Press 8/7/98]

In an Aug. 6 communique, the FARC said its offensive was directed
at the outgoing Samper government. From Aug. 3 to 5 the FARC says
it "overran and destroyed" three military and police bases;
attacked and destroyed seven military bases; attacked six
military bases; seized two police stations; attacked and
destroyed six police stations; and engaged in 23 other combat
situations. The FARC says 143 government troops were killed and
123 were wounded, and that it is holding 133 prisoners of war; 15
rebels were killed and 20 wounded, according to the communique.
The FARC also said it obtained 285 weapons and 16 radios in the
attacks, along with "documents useful for our military
intelligence." [FARC-EP Communique 8/6/98]

Two bases attacked by the FARC were in Arauquita and Fortul, in
Arauca department, where at least 6,000 indigenous residents
campesinos started a civic strike on July 30. Presumed FARC
rebels also blew up an electricity tower and a pipeline in the
same area, near the border with Venezuela. The municipalities of
Tame, Saravena, Arauquita and Fortul, have been completely shut
down by the strike; residents are protesting paramilitary attacks
and the government's economic neglect of the region. As of Aug.
1, the strike had reportedly spread to other municipalities in
the nearby departments of Boyaca and Norte de Santander,
involving some 25,000 campesinos. President Samper said the
campesinos were being used as a political instrument by the
rebels. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 8/3/98 from AP; Correo del
Magdalena (published by ELN) #87, 7/26/98-8/1/98; El Espectador
(Bogota) 8/5/98] As of Aug. 3 some 15,000 campesinos all over
Colombia--including 9,000 who were displaced by paramilitary
violence in Barrancabermeja, San Pablo, Puerto Wilches and Yondo
[see Update #443]--were continuing a protest that began four
weeks ago, according to Associated Press. [ED-LP 8/3/98 from AP]

*3. COLOMBIAN REBELS DESTROY US ANTI-DRUG BASE

On Aug. 4, about 500 FARC rebels overran a US-backed counter-
narcotics base in Miraflores, Guaviare department. The attack
went on for more than 24 hours. The base, which is a major center
for US counternarcotics advisers, was destroyed. The Medellin
daily El Colombiano reports that more than 30 army and police
troops were killed in the action and another 120 remain missing.
Reuter reports at least 10 police agents and soldiers killed and
22 missing. [New York Times 8/5/98 from Reuter; EC 8/7/98] The
Army Command said specialized Army and National Police troops of
the Counter-Guerrilla Battalion #7 were able to retake control of
the base area on Aug. 6, although their planes and helicopters
were met by rebel fire. [EC 8/7/98]

The US government tried to downplay the rebel offensive; an
unidentified State Department official told Reuter the FARC
attacks "will have an insignificant impact on anti-drug
operations in Colombia." The Miraflores base, the official said,
"was used to occasionally resupply coca eradication missions."
But advisers to Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), who chairs the US
House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee [and is a
close ally of Colombia's National Police], said Miraflores was a
vital base for coca eradication operations. Gilman called
Pastrana's plan for peace with the rebels a "pact with the
devil." Gilman has been pushing for more US aid for Colombia's
military and police; other sectors of the US government worry
about a possible "Vietnamization" of the conflict. [EC 8/7/98]

Barry McCaffrey, head of the US White House Office of Drug
Control Policy, will ask Congress to consider approving a special
allocation to help rebuild and modernize the Miraflores base,
said a Colombian police spokesperson on Aug. 9. The financing
proposal was worked out on Aug. 8 at a meeting in Bogota between
National Police director Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano and a delegation
led by McCaffrey and Thomas McLarty (former special adviser to
President Bill Clinton for Latin America; described by Miami
daily El Nuevo Herald as the State Department spokesperson for
narcotics affairs). Also taking part in the meeting were
Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs Peter Romero
and US ambassador to Colombia Curtis Kamman. The US officials
were reportedly in Colombia to attend Pastrana's inauguration.
[ENH 8/9/98; AFP 8/6/98]

Over the weekend of Aug. 1, less than a week before his
inauguration, Pastrana and a small delegation of his future
cabinet members traveled to Washington for a series of meetings.
On Aug. 3, they met for 35 minutes with President Clinton,
accompanied by Attorney General Janet Reno and McCaffrey. "From
now on, the anti-drug plan will come exclusively from the
Colombian government and we will join in as a work team,"
McCaffrey told a correspondent for the New York Spanish-language
daily El Diario-La Prensa after the meeting. The US will support
Pastrana's anti-drug strategy, "whatever it may be," McCaffrey
promised. Pastrana followed up the White House meeting with a
lunch date with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. [ED-LP
8/4/98 from correspondent]

Relations between the US and Colombia "were so bad during the
whole Samper administration, they can't help but improve," says
Lowell Fleischer of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington. However, he warned, "The stumbling block
remains the whole narcotics issue." [AFP 8/6/98]

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) reports that Pastrana
has pledged to end the US-sponsored and locally hated program of
aerial fumigation of coca and poppy fields in Colombia and leave
responsibility for the destruction of coca crops in rebel-
controlled areas in the hands of local leftist leaders.

According to COHA, "Evidence suggests that the US administration
intends to escalate its involvement in Colombia until it  reaches
a point where, almost unnoticed, a full-scale intervention could
(perhaps inadvertently) be achieved." Says COHA: "One faction of
[Pastrana's] advisers is reportedly counseling that his first
step toward ending the [armed] conflict... must be to halt the
growing US involvement.... (...) This would help to prevent the
rebel cause from  being transformed into a great national
patriotic struggle against the US, whose mission appears to be to
preserve Colombia's anti-drug apparatus intact and keep the
nation mobilized for a war without end, irrespective of domestic
costs." [COHA Press Release 7/27/98]

*4. OUTGOING COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT APOLOGIZES FOR SOME 
MASSACRES

In a rare ceremony of public apology, President Ernesto Samper
Pizano admitted on July 29--a week and two days before leaving
office--that Colombian government agents were responsible for
killing 49 people in five different massacres and selective
killings from 1991 to 1993. It marked the second time Samper had
acknowledged state responsibility for major massacres, all of
which occurred before he came to office in 1994. "The national
government wants...to express in this act of public apology its
shame at these events of insane violence," said Samper.

"I ask forgiveness because the Military Forces murdered 17
campesinos in the community of Los Uvos, Cauca, on Apr. 7, 1991.
Forgiveness, for the 20 Paez Indians killed on the El Nilo
Hacienda, Cauca, on Dec. 16, 1991 [police helped gun down the
victims, who had been called to the ranch by its owners, upset
over a labor dispute]. Forgiveness, for [lawyers] Faride Herrera
and Oscar Ivan Andrede, who were [murdered while] traveling from
Cucuta to Ocana on Apr. 13, 1992. Forgiveness, for the
[execution-style] murder of 16-year old Roison Mora Rubiano in
Bogota on June 22, 1993. Forgiveness, for the eight minors and
one adult, shot to death in Villatina [Medellin], on Nov. 15,
1992 [by police, in the name of "social cleansing"]," said
Samper.

In all cases, defendants accused of responsibility in the
killings were acquitted by military tribunals. Civil
investigations are still pending in several cases. Complaints
were later sent to the human rights branch of the Organization of
American States (OAS), where the Colombian government was found
liable. In a similar ceremony in January 1995, Samper accepted
government blame for brutal sweeps by government agents and
cocaine cartel hit squads through the town of Trujillo in 1989
and 1990 that left 107 peasant leaders and activists dead.

Relatives of the 49 victims of the massacres attended the July 29
ceremony, not to applaud Samper but to demand that the government
reform the Military Penal Code to eliminate the system that
guarantees impunity by allowing military officers to be tried for
human rights violations only in military courts. [Correo del
Magdalena 7/26/98-8/1/98]

Samper said his administration had made "immense strides...in the
matter of human rights." Human rights monitors dispute the claim:
"Samper's administration has been a human rights disaster," said
Carlos Salinas, Amnesty International's advocacy director for
Latin America, in a telephone interview from his office in
Washington. The Samper government has done next to nothing to
prosecute rights violators, charged Salinas, and attacks on human
rights defenders are at an all-time high. The public act was "one
token way that the state can approximate its debt" to victims of
the massacres, said Salinas. "To get the government to
acknowledge what it did today was really arduous work," said a
Colombian human rights lawyer, who asked not to be named. [Miami
Herald 7/30/98; Correo del Magdalena 7/26/98-8/1/98] According to
Defender of the People Jose Fernando Castro, there were 288
massacres in Colombia in 1997, leaving 1,228 people dead and 1.2
million refugees. [Red de Hermandad y Solidaridad Colombo
Ecuatoriana Boletin Colombia Segundo Trimestre]