Guerrillas Used New Weapons, Tactics

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 8 -- Colombian military and political leaders warned today that Wednesday's guerrilla attack on the presidential palace during President
Alvaro Uribe's swearing-in ceremony signaled the start of a more intensive period in the country's four-decade-old war.

The mostly grim analysis came as Uribe used his first full day in office to visit two provincial capitals to discuss his security and education plans. Asked about the
inauguration day attack, whose death toll rose to 19 today, according to police, Uribe urged Colombians to "overcome fear" by working on behalf of a strained central
government to help end the war.

"We will die if we must, but we have to recover peace," Uribe said in introducing his plan for a national civilian intelligence network during a visit to the city of
Valledupar. "If we don't act with enthusiasm and energy, we just won't succeed."

As the death toll from the mortar attack climbed, Colombian politicians and U.S. diplomats drew various conclusions about the incident and its effect on efforts to end a
conflict fed by social inequality, drug profits and ideology. From the timing of the attack to the weapons used, a confident guerrilla force appeared to be warning the new
president that his promise to intensify the battle against them would have little effect, government officials and military analysts said.

Uribe took office promising a broader military campaign against the largest of two rebel groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, perhaps with
enhanced U.S. military aid. He tied any future peace talks with the guerrillas to a cease-fire.

The U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan, told Uribe by phone today that the organization would accept his request to help mediate efforts to renew peace talks between
the guerrillas and the government.

Colombian authorities have blamed the FARC for firing as many as a dozen mortars toward the presidential palace in the moments before Uribe was sworn into office
at the parliament building a few blocks away. At least four of those mortars exploded, one on the palace grounds and two deadly ones in a poor neighborhood nearby,
police said.

"It was a challenge to the president's security policy, and the conditions he has placed on peace talks," said Alfredo Rangel, a military analyst and former Defense
Ministry adviser. "New methods of war are being introduced, and it likely means more movement from the guerrilla's power base in the countryside to the cities."

The 18,000-member FARC, a mostly rural insurgency that has been trying to topple the government since 1964 and replace it with a Marxist-oriented state, vigorously
opposed Uribe's election, as did the smaller group, the National Liberation Army. The guerrillas are battling a thinly stretched U.S.-backed military and a 15,000-member
paramilitary group known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. That group fights by the army's side, serving as a sometimes brutal if increasingly
popular proxy for a weak government.

All three irregular armies are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups. They collect much of their war financing from Colombia's vast drug trade, which
supplies the raw material for 90 percent of the cocaine reaching the United States.

The paramilitaries and the guerrillas used military pressure to influence the May presidential elections -- the former promoting Uribe's candidacy, the latter trying to
scuttle it. But despite guerrilla warnings, Colombians voted overwhelming for Uribe and the central premise of his candidacy, that a meaningful peace process requires a
short-term intensification of military operations against the guerrillas.

During a breakfast meeting with reporters here today, Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick, who led a U.S. delegation to Uribe's inauguration, said the audacity of
the guerrilla attack despite the presence of thousands of troops masked the larger failure of those tactics.

"It's easy to overlook what we also witnessed yesterday," Zoellick said. "The biggest story of what is happening here is the triumph of democracy. There clearly was a
larger purpose -- to kill innocent people and stop the inauguration. And despite the great tragedy, they failed again."

In a statement from his ranch in Crawford, Tex., President Bush condemned "these heinous acts" and said, "The United States stands with the people of Colombia in
their struggle against terror." In the past two years, the United States has given nearly $2 billion in anti-drug aid to the country, mostly in the form of transport helicopters
and a U.S.-trained army brigade.

The Bush administration has asked Congress to allow that aid to be used directly against the guerrillas. It is seeking an additional $800 million over the next two years,
partly to train a new Colombian army brigade to protect a major oil pipeline that is a frequent guerrilla target. Uribe has also requested broader U.S. intelligence
assistance to be used against the guerrillas.

But Colombian politicians drew darker conclusions from the attack, based on the type of weapon used by the guerrillas. Colombian authorities identified the explosives
today as 120mm homemade mortars with a range of more than a mile. Those are significantly more sophisticated than the powerful, if notoriously inaccurate, shells
made from propane cylinders that the FARC commonly uses.

"This type of attack is absolutely impossible to stop," said Antonio Navarro, a Colombian senator and former leader of an urban guerrilla movement that has now
demobilized.

"Unfortunately, neither the government nor the FARC nor the United States is going to be friends of any peace process right now," Navarro added. "They are preparing
for a great battle, and now it has begun."

Presenting a cool face to the country, Uribe outlined his plans for a million-member civilian intelligence network that has been among the most controversial of his
security proposals. He introduced the first 600 volunteers of the Civilian Informant Network in Cesar, a northeastern province that has been plagued by guerrilla
kidnappings.

Uribe said the volunteers would not be armed, at least not to start.

As governor of Colombia's largest province in the mid-1990s, Uribe embraced a similar program that put civilians to work as government informants. But several of
those groups began working with paramilitary forces, helping the group drive out guerrillas by attacking their suspected civilian support.

Aware of those concerns, Uribe placed the new network under control of Luis Carlos Restrepo, a psychiatrist by training who is serving as Uribe's peace commissioner,
rather than under the military. The volunteers, however, will receive at least some military training.

"Let's not make this too complicated. We must go forward," Uribe said. "Here we have a huge risk to 40 million Colombians. If we all work together, we will get rid of
that risk."

                                               © 2002