Fujimori announced on Monday the government would introduce an obligatory military call-up for Peruvians if the country needed to thwart rebel attacks from Colombia

Peru bolsters army patrols along Colombia border

IQUITOS, Peru -- Peru bolstered army patrols on its jungle border with Colombia this week amid worries that Marxist guerrillas from its war-torn northern neighbour could cross into the Andean nation, an army spokesman said on Friday.

The sending of helicopters, boats and soldiers to the frontier came days ahead of a scheduled visit to Peru by top U.S. anti-drugs official Barry McCaffrey, as international concern grows that an upsurge in Colombia's rebel and narcotics violence could spill over its borders.

The troops, which are patrolling a 1,000 mile-long (1,600 km) river border, have reinforced two battalions of 1,300 soldiers sent by President Alberto Fujimori earlier this year. Fujimori has said he will crack down on any attempts by rebels to cross into Peru.

``We have set ourselves up all along the border,'' a spokesman at a military base in Iquitos, the main town in Peru's Amazon region, told Reuters.

He declined to reveal the size of this week's reinforcement.

Fujimori announced on Monday the government would introduce an obligatory military call-up for Peruvians if the country needed to thwart rebel attacks from Colombia.

The frontier, weeks away by river and road from Lima, is only a few hundred yards (metres) wide. Many Peruvian villagers said before the military deployment earlier this year that they lived in fear of the right-wing paramilitaries, rebels and drug traffickers who dominated the zone.

The region is a focus of drug smuggling between Peru and Colombia, two nations responsible for much of the world's cocaine supply.

The U.S. government is worried that Colombia's growing violence could be a destabilising factor in the region and has accused Colombian rebels and rival ultra right-wing death squads of funding their efforts with proceeds from drug trafficking.