BOGOTA, Colombia -- (AP) -- President Andres Pastrana says he will not
 extradite to the United States a guerrilla commander accused of ordering the
 murders of three American activists last year.

 In an apparent gesture to the country's leftist rebels, Pastrana said German
 Briceno, a regional commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
 or FARC, will remain in Colombia.

 ``This is a crime that will be tried in Colombia,'' Pastrana stressed Thursday in an
 interview with The Associated Press.

 Prosecutors say Briceno ordered the deaths of three U.S. Indian-rights activists in
 March.

 The killings prompted U.S. diplomats to break off exploratory contacts with the
 FARC aimed at bringing the rebels into the process of weaning peasants off drug
 crops.

 Colombian prosecutors have filed murder charges against Briceno, who remains
 at large. On Thursday, they subpoenaed Briceno's brother, Jorge, the FARC's No.
 2 leader and also a fugitive, in the case.

 Pastrana also said that although the bulk of a $1.6 billion U.S. aid package would
 fund an escalating war against drug cartels, tens of millions would go toward
 softening the blow for peasant farmers who will be forced to abandon illegal crops.

 In addition to underwriting a U.S.-trained counter-narcotics battalion into a
 rebel-dominated southern region to destroy drug crops, the president said he also
 wants Washington to fund alternative development including cattle ranching and
 coffee, cotton and quinine cultivation.

 ``We've got to give these people a hand,'' Pastrana said during a 45-minute
 interview in his office in the presidential palace. ``We can't look at the problem
 only as one of fumigation and eradication.''

 Facing a civil conflict that claims 3,000 lives a year and the corrupting influence of
 drug trafficking, Colombia is in the throes of its worst recession since the 1930s.

 After taking office in August 1998, Pastrana bet his presidency on making peace
 with the FARC, withdrawing troops from a huge swath of southern Colombia even
 though the rebels have refused a cease-fire offer and have continued to promote
 cocaine production.

 Pastrana acknowledged Thursday that the rebels are deeply involved in the drug
 business, but added ``we have no clear evidence that the FARC is a cartel''

 ``We know it lives off drugs. But we also know that behind it is a political life of 40
 years of insurgency that can't simply be cast aside,'' he said.

 On the U.S. aid package, Pastrana said 79 percent of the money would help
 Colombia's military and police battle drugs in the world's No. 1 cocaine-producing
 nation, including the purchase of 63 helicopters and the training of two additional
 950-man counternarcotics battalions.

 Critics of the aid plan, which the U.S. Congress is to begin debating next week,
 say Pastrana's alternative development plans are ill-conceived and inadequate.
 They predict a bloody backlash against it in the southern region of Putumayo,
 where troops will launch a push in the coming weeks to wipe out a third of the
 country's coca crop.

 Hundreds of FARC rebels protect drug crops in Putumayo, where five U.S.
 military personnel were killed in the July crash of an Army RC-7 spy plane that
 was apparently caused by pilot error.

 More than 100 U.S. military personnel are in Colombia at any one time, training
 troops and helping improve the Colombian military's intelligence-gathering.
 

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald