US Says Will Not Increase Colombia War Involvement

reuters.com Wed March 5, 2003 04:19 PM ET By Jason Webb

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - U.S. troops are helping hunt Colombia rebels who captured three Americans but the United States has no plans to expand its military presence, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Washington has flown about 50 extra personnel to Colombia to assist a massive Colombian army rescue operation to find three Defense Department contractors seized by Marxist guerrillas when their plane crashed on Feb. 13.

The deployment in a country bogged down in a messy four-decade civil war means that the number of American military personnel in Colombia has slightly exceeded a cap of 400 imposed by U.S. Congress, but it will make no difference to the ground rules of assistance from Washington, the official said.

"What will remain a base here it seems to me is our interest in having Colombians doing this job for Colombians," the official told reporters, asking not to be identified.

Although he refused to rule out the participation of a small number of Special Forces in a rescue operation, American troops here are otherwise limited to working in training and intelligence.

Future American involvement in Colombia, the third-largest destination for U.S. military aid after Israel and Egypt, will be similar to the recent past, the official said.

"Not breaking caps, no combat forces, this is a Colombian responsibility," he said, adding that the U.S. commitment to the country would not be sapped by its deployments elsewhere.

"I don't think our effort in trying to get Iraq to disarm has anything to do with what we do or don't do with Colombia."

The United States has given Colombia about $2 billion in mainly military aid in recent years, targeted mostly for the cocaine trade but also, more recently, at rebels.

U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman met President Alvaro Uribe on Wednesday to discuss U.S. aid and recent progress in reducing crops used for cocaine.

U.S. TO THE RESCUE

Many in the United States have long feared that U.S. troops could get sucked into a Vietnam-style quagmire in Colombia, where thousands of people are killed every year.

At least seven people were killed and 68 hurt on Wednesday when a bomb ripped through an underground parking lot at a shopping mall in Cucuta, on the border with Venezuela.

Uribe is an enthusiastic U.S. ally and has even suggested that the United States fill the Caribbean with troops to strangle the drug trade.

The arrival of reinforcements for the rescue operation spurred some opposition politicians here to complain that fighting by U.S. troops would violate Colombian sovereignty.

But opinion polls show many Colombians, tired of their troops' failure to beat rebels and right-wing militias, would welcome direct intervention by U.S. forces.

Washington has been pleased with Colombia's attempts to find its citizens, another U.S. official said.

"The Colombian military has done a wonderful job on this. They've got close to 5,000 folks out there and one way or another they're in harm's way."

The three Americans were captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a group known by the Spanish initials FARC, when their U.S. government plane crashed in the steamy southern province of Caqueta, a guerrilla stronghold.

The rebels, who killed a fourth American and a Colombian army sergeant on board the plane, say their captives are CIA agents and want to swap them for guerrillas held in Colombian jails. U.S. officials insist they are civilian Defense Department contractors who were taking part in an intelligence mission.