-Caveat Lector- ASSOCIATED PRESS Sunday, 8 July 2001 Colombia War Highlights Arms Trade ---------------------------------- By Nick Rosen BOGOTA -- The smuggling operation showed how fueling a war in Colombia can be nearly as easy as stepping into a Miami gun shop. Colombian arms dealers in the United States on tourist visas purchased assault rifles in Miami shops, packed them in bubble wrap and sent them home on cargo flights, listed as machinery parts. Their destination: guerrillas trying to overthrow the South American country's elected government. The smuggling operation, which Colombian and U.S. officials say was operating during 1997 and 1998, illustrates just one of the myriad ways that black market weapons elude national and international controls to fuel the violence of Colombia's 37-year civil war, rampant drug trafficking and sky-high common crime. The smuggling network from Miami to the Caribbean city of Barranquilla was also one tiny link in a global small arms trafficking problem that will be the focus of unprecedented attention with the start of a U.N. conference in New York on Monday. The 11-day conference, presided over by a Colombian diplomat, aims to combat an illicit trade believed to be worth billions of dollars a year and contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths in conflict zones from Africa to Latin America. The impact is severe in Colombia, with more than 3,000 people killed in the civil conflict annually and one of the world's highest per capita homicide rates. Many of the guns flowing into Colombia are left over from civil wars fought during the 1980s in Central America or come from stockpiles in the former Soviet bloc. In recent years, authorities have seized handguns and assault rifles from the United States, Brazil, China, North Korea, Bulgaria and Romania. Some recent high-profile cases: On Sunday, Colombian police said they seized 31 assault rifles including 27 AK-47s three rockets and a rocket launcher sent from Nicaragua and destined for the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The shipment and three men were captured on San Andres Island, 372 miles off Colombia's northern coast, said National Police chief Gen. Ernesto Gilibert. A fugitive Brazilian trafficker was caught in the Colombian jungles in April, accused of trading guns for cocaine with the FARC. Peruvian authorities are investigating allegations that disgraced former spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos arranged for at least 10,000 AK-47 assault rifles Peru purchased from Jordan to be diverted to the FARC in an airdrop last year. Colombia's top rightist paramilitary leader claimed last year that he had arranged to purchase a large cache of Chinese-made arms from traffickers in Suriname, but that the FARC outbid him for the shipment once it arrived via Brazil. The U.S. government has provided Colombia army counterdrug battalions with grenade launchers, mortars and M-60 machine guns as part of a $1.3 billion aid plan. There have been no reported cases of selloffs of U.S.-provided weapons by corrupt soldiers. With coasts along two oceans, long chains of Andean mountains and rivers, and 3,700 miles of sparsely populated borders with five different countries, Colombia is particularly vulnerable to smuggling. The number of illegal firearms confiscated here grew from about 23,000 in 1994 to 42,000 last year, according to police. Ten times that amount are believed to be entering the country undetected. Colonel Alberto Ruiz, director of the DIJIN, Colombia's judicial police force, says intelligence-sharing by Colombia's neighbors has helped stem arms trafficking, but that more far-reaching measures are needed. ''We really need wider accords with countries that manufacture the guns, to try to get more control over the legal sale of weapons,'' says Ruiz, ''Because most illegal arms begin as legal arms.'' The assault rifles being shipped from Miami to Barranquilla were headed for the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second largest rebel band, according to Detective Edgar Gonzalez of the DAS state security agency. Colombian intelligence officials intercepted a phone conversation in February 1997 revealing a sale about to occur. Agents pounced on a house outside the city and captured dozens of Kalashnikov assault rifles. The smugglers got away, but Colombian officials with the help of the U.S. Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms traced the weapons' serial numbers back to sales made a several Miami gun shops, Gonzalez said. Gonzalez said authorities have traced more than a hundred assault rifles seized here from rebels and criminal gangs back to the Miami purchases. ATF officials said they believe the group purchased at least 600 assault rifles in the United States. The five Colombians involved in the smuggling operation are now behind bars three here and two in the United States. But authorities acknowledge they may barely have dented the flow of illegal U.S. arms into Colombia. ''There are an estimated 200 million firearms in the United States and they are readily available for purchase,'' said Scott Pickett, the ATF's chief of international programs in a phone interview from Washington. ''This makes working these trafficking cases very difficult,'' he added. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om