By Karen DeYoung
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
                  Thursday, March 16, 2000; Page A22

                  BOGOTA, Colombia, March 15—Assailed for human rights violations by
                  the State Department, independent rights groups and the United Nations,
                  the Colombian military put out its own report today, declaring impressive
                  improvements in human rights observance and evenhandedness in pursuing
                  armed groups on the left and right.

                  The report's statistics, to be delivered in Washington by Defense Minister
                  Luis Fernando Ramirez on Monday, were the first comprehensive tally
                  released by the Colombian Defense Ministry. They offered a stark contrast
                  to charges that the military has colluded with right-wing paramilitary groups
                  that others hold responsible for the majority of human rights violations.

                  According to the military report, leftist guerrillas are responsible for nearly
                  85 percent of all violations of human rights and international humanitarian
                  law in Colombia in the past five years, with the paramilitary groups
                  responsible for 13.3 percent. These findings run counter to the assessments
                  of other groups inside and outside Colombia.

                  Ramirez told a news conference that "we are not trying to get into a
                  controversy with other publications" or deny Colombia's problems. The
                  military's objective, he said, "is to present all the statistics we have because
                  sometimes not everyone has access to . . . everything that happens in
                  Colombia."

                  As the Clinton administration's $1.6 billion anti-narcotics assistance
                  package for Colombia has rushed its way through Congress, many
                  members have harshly criticized the Colombian military, which is to receive
                  most of the money. Today's report is an apparent effort by the military to
                  counter such criticism, but it was immediately assailed by human rights
                  groups.

                  "It's a step backward," said Jose Manuel Vivanco of Human Rights
                  Watch, whose New York-based organization last month blamed the
                  majority of human rights violations on the paramilitary groups and charged
                  that half of Colombia's 18 army brigade headquarters were involved in
                  their activities in varying degrees.

                  A spokesman for the U.N. human rights office here, which is about to
                  release a new report criticizing President Andres Pastrana's government for
                  not doing enough on human rights, noted that its figures had come from
                  other government entities that seemed to disagree with the military's
                  accounting.

                  By anyone's calculation, Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in
                  the world, with assassinations, massacres, kidnappings for ransom and
                  abductions, direct assaults on population centers and terrorist attacks on
                  infrastructure targets. The military said that "at least 14,102 serious
                  infractions of international humanitarian law" occurred here in the last five
                  years.

                  Part of the difference between the military tally and others is due to the fact
                  that while most outside groups assess blame based on numbers of deaths
                  and what they consider more serious violations, the military report treats all
                  violations equally.

                  While holding guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
                  and the National Liberation Army culpable for the vast majority of
                  kidnappings and extortion, terrorist and municipal attacks, it said the
                  paramilitary groups were responsible for exponential growth in the number
                  of assassinations, and for 74 percent of what it counted as 551 deaths
                  during massacres of four or more people at a time in 1999.

                  According to the office of the independent human rights ombudsman
                  appointed by the Colombian government, nearly 1,500 deaths occurred in
                  more than 300 massacres last year. Due to release its own figures in a
                  report Friday, the ombudsman's office attributes 165 massacres to the
                  paramilitaries, 65 to the guerrillas, six to the armed forces and 71 to
                  undetermined offenders.

                  While recognizing that "there is still much room for improvement in
                  cleansing the state institutions in their capacity to guarantee the rights of
                  citizens," the military report said that public complaints against the armed
                  forces and police had decreased from more than 15 percent of all
                  complaints in 1995 to 2 percent last year, a figure human rights groups do
                  not dispute.

                  Special correspondent Steven Dudley contributed to this report.

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