Arrests of IRA Trainers Spark Calls to Close Safe Haven for Rebels

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

LOS POZOS, Colombia -- The capture of three Irish Republican Army members accused of schooling Colombian guerrillas in urban bombing skills has brought
fresh pressure on President Andres Pastrana to end his campaign to bring peace to this war-weary nation through concessions and negotiations.

Pastrana, who staked his presidency on ending a civil war nearly four decades old, has found it increasingly difficult in the face of escalating violence to justify holding
peace talks or maintaining the vast safe haven he created for the guerrillas almost three years ago to foster the negotiations. The IRA arrests, on Aug. 11, have
brought even more pressure to bear, raising the specter of new violence in Colombian cities that in recent years have escaped the ravages of the largely rural conflict.

Senior military leaders had complained even before the IRA arrests that the demilitarized zone was being used by the country's largest guerrilla group, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to prepare for war rather than to negotiate peace. Now they cite the presence of the IRA members here in the
rebel-controlled zone, 180 miles south of Bogota, as more evidence that army troops should be sent back into the area.

"It is the president's decision," Gen. Fernando Tapias, head of the Colombian armed forces, said in an interview. "But what is certain is that the zone has been used
for criminal acts by the guerrillas since it was created. This [arrest of the IRA men] is just more proof of those practices."

Pastrana must decide in October whether to continue the safe haven or abandon the talks.

As part of a broad policy review, senior U.S. officials are scheduled to arrive in Colombia next week, partly to raise with Pastrana U.S. concerns about the safe
haven similar to those cited by Tapias. In Washington, too, the reported links with the IRA have intensified doubts about the zone.

"The so-called FARC are misusing the demilitarized zone to abuse prisoners, hold kidnap victims, engage in narcotics trafficking and, for example, reportedly receive
training from the Irish Republican Army," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Thursday. "Such activities are not consistent with the peace process, that
very process that President Pastrana has worked so hard to advance."

Colombian military officials have outlined evidence that the three IRA men taught FARC rebels how to use plastic explosives and make mortars far more accurate
and powerful than the primitive artillery FARC combatants traditionally fashion from propane gas cylinders.

Adding weight to that theory, a leader of Colombia's anti-guerrilla paramilitary forces, Carlos Castano, said in a statement Thursday that he too was approached by
one of the IRA suspects. Castano said the man had offered his "professional services" to train paramilitary troops, who fight the guerrillas on the side of the army.

The guerrilla training allegedly took place over five weeks here in the FARC's Switzerland-size safe haven. On Friday, the Colombian military arrested a man they
said was an Irish citizen inside the safe haven who said he had been teaching English in local villages. The 48-year-old man, whose name was not released, was
transported to Bogota but not charged.

For several months, military intelligence and diplomats involved in the peace talks have predicted the FARC would respond with urban terror attacks to Colombia's
enhanced military capability, largely due to a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package. The bulk of the U.S. aid is arriving in the form of several dozen transport helicopters
intended to make the Colombian military more mobile.

In recent years, Colombia's influential elite has lived largely untouched by the daily tragedies of a mostly rural war. Any guerrilla push into the cities would swiftly
increase the pressure on Pastrana, himself a member of the elite, to end what many consider a fruitless peace process and gird the country for more violence.

The FARC's top military commander, Jorge Briceno, fueled fears about an urban war in June when he warned a group of captured Colombian soldiers on the eve of
their release that "jungles are for rats" and that they should expect to see the FARC in the cities. Briceno's words are also at the heart of the IRA case.

Transcripts of alleged phone conversations between Briceno and another FARC commander, recorded three days before the IRA members were arrested in
Bogota, includes his instruction that training conducted by the men be shared among all FARC military units. The radio transmission was intercepted by a Colombian
military listening installation in Caqueta province, according to military officials. A transcript was published in the magazine Cambio.

"I have said that we have to shake up the cities to see if the enemies of a political solution understand that they must be more open and that we are not going to
resolve this with more war," Briceno said, according to the transcript. He went on to say that plastic explosives, including the Semtex used in high-profile IRA
bombings, would be brought into Colombia through Venezuela "where there are people to help us."

By tipping off authorities that the IRA men had finished the training, the conversation helped military officials arrest Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James
Monaghan as they tried to board an Air France flight to Paris. Each was traveling on a false passport under an alias, and Tapias said British officials helped the
Colombians determine that they were members of the Provisional IRA -- the main branch of the IRA.

The Colombian attorney general formally charged the three men Tuesday with helping train terrorists and traveling on false passports. They await trial in La Modelo
prison in Bogota.

But in interviews here in the demilitarized zone this week, FARC commanders said the IRA case was an attempt by conservative military commanders to disrupt
Pastrana's peace efforts. According to several FARC commanders involved in the peace talks, the three IRA visitors arrived in the zone last month to learn about the
FARC's negotiating experiences as the IRA's own peace process with the British government reached a rough patch over disarmament.

"We are not training one person in these things," said Raul Reyes, a leading FARC commander who was referring to the charges of preparations for urban bombings.
"This is a huge lie. They came here to benefit and exchange ideas about our negotiations. They are in the midst of their own with the British, and we are doing the
same here. We have much to share."

Only Connolly, traveling under the name David Bracken, spoke Spanish, and he identified the three to Colombian authorities when they were arrested as Irish
journalists preparing a report on the demilitarized zone. Reyes said Connolly interpreted for the other two IRA members during their five-week visit. He said the men
stayed at a FARC camp near La Macarena, in a region where top FARC commanders live, and not in this town of brightly painted plywood houses and a FARC
complex. The guerrilla group usually hosts visiting foreigners, who have included the head of the New York Stock Exchange, at the complex.

The Cuban government has said Connolly has been the Latin America representative for the IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, since 1996, based in Havana. But
Colombian military suggestions that Cuba arranged the training was dismissed by a senior Cuban intelligence official in Bogota as "a Hollywood movie." Most
worrisome to Colombian authorities is Monaghan, who at 55 is the oldest of the three suspects and formerly a member of the executive board of Sinn Fein.
Colombian officials said he is one of the IRA's leading experts on developing bombs and mortars.

Tapias said Cuban and Venezuelan military trainers were in the demilitarized zone teaching FARC forces how to manage explosives and large-caliber arms, and how
to shoot down helicopters and small planes. That information came from military intelligence based on stories told by captured and deserting guerrillas over the past
two years, he said.

As a result, Colombian intelligence was on the lookout for foreigners traveling to the demilitarized zone, which the IRA members did last month on a commercial
airline operated by the Colombian military. Since their arrest, Tapias said, investigators discovered traces of four kinds of explosives on their clothes. U.S. intelligence
officials also tested the evidence, Tapias said, and confirmed the results.

Tapias said that, according to Colombian intelligence, one group of FARC forces to receive IRA instruction was under the direction of German Briceno, brother of
the FARC military commander and the man who allegedly gave the order two years ago to kill three American indigenous activists working in a guerrilla-controlled
area. U.S. officials cited that case as the primary reason that they will not meet with FARC officials or take a more direct role in Colombia's peace process.

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