``In Colombia we calculate that there are approximately 2,000 North American military personnel.''

REUTERS
Monday, 27 September 1999
 

Rebel says Colombia may be next Vietnam

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia -- The United States maintains a larger military presence in Colombia than it publicly acknowledges and could find itself drawn into a conflict with Marxist rebels similar to the Vietnam War, a senior guerrilla leader says.

``The spiral of intervention that the North Americans have unleashed is very dangerous,'' Ivan Rios, a commander of the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), told Reuters in a weekend interview, referring to the Americans.

``It's possible that this isn't going to be like some little Vietnam but that it will turn out to be a big Vietnam,'' said Rios, a member of the FARC's policy-making joint chiefs of staff.

Rios, 37, spoke in his headquarters overlooking the main square of this muddy cattle town in the centre of a Switzerland-sized area of savanna and jungle that the government ceded to rebel control in November as an inducement to enter into talks to end Colombia's 35-year-old conflict.
 

American officials estimate that on average no more than 150 to 250 U.S. military personnel are in Colombia, the third-largest recipient of U.S. security assistance this year.

But Rios said the American presence was much larger, claiming the United States was deeply involved in efforts to bolster the poorly trained and poorly equipped Colombian army and police to put them on a more equal footing with the 17,000-strong FARC.

``In Colombia we calculate that there are approximately 2,000 North American military personnel,'' said Rios, tilting back the brim of his olive-drab military cap, which is adorned with a red-and-black pin showing the image of Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara, the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary figure.
 

``Some of them are involved in espionage, others serve as delegates to the various security forces, such as the DAS (state security police) or the police. Still others are out there training battalions or piloting military spy planes like the one that crashed (in July),'' he said.

The U.S. embassy declined to comment on Rios' remarks. The United States has maintained that its military aid to Colombia is earmarked exclusively for counternarcotics efforts, not for fighting the FARC or the smaller National Liberation Army.

But Rios said the five American soldiers killed in the crash of the U.S. spy plane in July were on an espionage mission that had nothing to do with counternarcotics efforts.
 

The guerrilla leader also said the FARC was ready to face an invasion force, and a U.S. bombing campaign if necessary, to achieve its goals, including the building of a Socialist state.

Rios said President Andres Pastrana and hardliners in Washington have been gearing up for all-out war in Colombia and prying open the door to the same sort of direct U.S. involvement that occurred in the conflicts of Central America in the 1980s and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.

The peace talks are due to resume soon after a three-month paralysis partly blamed on rebel rejection of an international verification commission in the area they control.

But Rios, a fierce critic of growing U.S. aid for Colombia's military and anti-drug operations, said he sees the peace process as leading nowhere because it has little apparent backing in Washington or among Colombia's wealthy elite.

And he said the negotiating process itself was something that has been manipulated by Pastrana to protect powerful economic interests that are among the root causes of violence in Colombia.

``The government's will to make peace is losing credibility,'' he said.