By Douglas Farah
                  Washington Post Foreign Service
 

                  The Clinton administration, fearing Colombia is losing its war against
                  Marxist-led insurgents, has for the first time begun sharing sensitive
                  real-time intelligence on the guerrillas with the Colombian military,
                  according to U.S. officials and documents.

                  The new guidelines, authorized in March by an interagency task force led
                  by the State Department, represents a shift away from a long-standing
                  policy that only limited intelligence could be shared with Colombian army
                  and only when the information was directly related to counter-drug
                  activities. This policy reflected a desire to avoid getting involved in
                  counterinsurgency operations and concern over the army's history of
                  human rights abuses.

                  Colombia, which produces 80 percent of the world's cocaine and about
                  two-thirds of the heroin consumed in the United States, will receive $300
                  million in U.S. counter-drug aid this year, making it the third-largest military
                  aid recipient in the world, after Israel and Egypt.

                  U.S. and Colombian officials said the loosening of restrictions on
                  immediate sharing of satellite images, communications intercepts and other
                  sensitive data was still geared to fighting the flow of drugs from Colombia.
                  But the officials said the new policy recognizes that in many areas the
                  guerrilla forces and drug traffickers are the same people.

                  "There is a difference between providing information on the insurgents and
                  providing information on drug activities, of which the insurgents are a
                  significant part," said one White House official.

                  The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), with about
                  15,000 combatants, and the National Liberation Army (ELN), with about
                  5,000 combatants, control about 50 percent of Colombia's territory.
                  Colombian and U.S. intelligence reports say both insurgent groups derive
                  much of their money--up to $600 million a year--from protecting drug
                  traffickers, their routes and laboratories.

                  In their latest move,the FARC on Thursday launched a 12-hour attack on
                  the town of Gutierrez, about 15 miles south of Bogota, killing at least 48
                  soldiers, wounding 30 and leaving scores missing.

                  The attack came despite the fact that sporadic peace talks with the
                  government are scheduled to resume on July 20.

                  It was the latest in a series of devastating military defeats over the past 18
                  months, setbacks a Pentagon spokesman said led to a "policy
                  determination to expand the definition of counter-narcotics to anything that
                  poses a threat to counter-drug forces."

                  The result is that "U.S. Embassy officials have decided to routinely provide
                  intelligence information related to the insurgents to Colombian units under
                  control of the joint [military and police] task force," said a report on
                  Colombia released last week by the General Accounting Office.
                  "According to these officials, the information is being used to plan
                  counternarcotics operations in the area controlled by insurgents; however,
                  they do not have a system to ensure that it is not being used for other than
                  counternarcotics purposes."

                  Human rights groups said the new guidelines were alarming because the
                  Colombian military has provided intelligence to paramilitary groups that
                  target human rights activists, labor leaders and other civilians that are
                  suspected leftists.

                  "As far as we know, there have been no reforms instituted that would
                  guarantee that does not happen again," said Winifred Tate of the
                  Washington Office on Latin America.

                  Pentagon officials said U.S. officials in Colombia are carefully monitoring
                  how the information was being used.

                  "We want the information to reach the units on the front lines in as timely a
                  fashion as possible," said a Pentagon official. "But the United States is well
                  aware of what the information is being used for and the pipeline can be
                  shut off at any time."

                  Another Pentagon official said the United States had no choice but to
                  expand intelligence cooperation.

                  "We have U.S. interests there and either we help Colombia or we don't,"
                  the senior official said. "And if we help we have to share intelligence.
                  Otherwise, we might as well pack it in."

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