[NOTE: The "United States" is lying through its rotting teeth! Not only are there swarms of "advisers" in Colombia, but special units of the U.S. military have been operating there at least for the past year. Mind you, I am not even counting the number of CIA agents! For more info visit the following webpages: http://www.prairienet.org/clm/980819DMN.html http://www.prairienet.org/clm/980713WP.html -DG] ============================================== But the United States has denied repeated rebel claims that it has military advisers in Colombia, and insists that it has no direct involvement in the country's long-running internal conflict. ___________________ ============================================== REUTERS Monday, 5 July 1999 Colombia rebel chief warns against U.S. invasion ------------------------------------------------ BOGOTA -- A top Marxist rebel leader has warned against a broader U.S. role in Colombia's civil conflict, saying it could get sucked into a Vietnam-style war that it would have no chance of winning. ``This isn't Yugoslavia for them (U.S. troops) to just come in and do whatever they want,'' said Jorge Briceno, the No. 2 leader and chief military strategist of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). ``Those kind of troops wouldn't last long here, given all the discomforts and the harshness of the tropical climate,'' he said in a television interview broadcast on Sunday night. Briceno's comments come against the backdrop of full-fledged peace talks with the government, which are due to get under way on Wednesday. The talks will be held in a Switzerland-sized area of south and southeast Colombia, which the government has granted the FARC control of since November as an inducement to enter into negotiations. The FARC is the largest and oldest guerrilla army in the Americas. The conflict in Colombia has taken more than 35,000 lives in the last decade alone. ``If they (the United States) invade they'll have to take the consequences,'' Briceno said, adding a direct U.S. role in Colombia's war could cause it to spill over into neighbouring countries and ignite a region-wide conflict. ``If you're attacked at home what do you do?'' Briceno, known by the alias Mono Jojoy, asked his TV interviewer. ``You have to go where your neighbour is,'' he said. In a separate interview, published in Monday's editions of Bogota's El Espectador newspaper, Briceno reiterated his charge that the United States, which accuses the FARC of drug trafficking, was gearing up for direct military intervention in Colombia. ``The North Americans have been intervening here for more than 50 years, but now they want to do it more directly,'' he said. ``We're alerting world public opinion to oppose this, because it's no good,'' he said. ``Look what happened in Yugoslavia. The North Americans talk about human rights while they bomb a nation and destroy it. They're the world's worst terrorists,'' Briceno said. Political analysts have long accused Washington of taking a hand in anti-guerrilla operations in Colombia, by deliberately blurring the lines between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency. But the United States has denied repeated rebel claims that it has military advisers in Colombia, and insists that it has no direct involvement in the country's long-running internal conflict. The FARC, founded as a pro-Soviet, Marxist group in the mid-1960s, prompted international outrage in March when it abducted and murdered three U.S. activists campaigning for the rights of a local Indian tribe. A warrant for the arrest of Briceno's brother, a regional FARC commander known by the alias Grannobles, has been issued in connection with the murders. In his remarks to El Espectador, Briceno called the killings ``an error'' but conceded he has little sympathy for the United States, which he accuses of covertly running Colombia's counterinsurgency effort. ``The tricky thing is that three gringos die and they make a whole damn song and dance about it, but 200 Colombians are killed on orders from them (the U.S.) and it's as if nothing happened here,'' he said. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited _______________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK: To subscribe to CSN-L send request to * * [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUB CSN-L Firstname Lastname * * (Direct questions or comments about CSN-L to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) * * Visit the website of CSN's Champaign-Urbana (Illinois) chapter at * * http://www.prairienet.org/csncu Subscribe to the COLOMBIA BULLETIN * * For free copy and info contact CSN, P.O. Box 1505, Madison WI 53701 * * or call (608) 257-8753 fax: (608) 255-6621 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Visit the COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK at http://www.igc.org/csn * * Visit the COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR at http://www.prairienet.org/clm * ***********************************************************************
