Colombian Leader Fires Army General

President Andres Pastrana on Thursday dismissed an army general accused of failing to prevent the massacre of 36 villagers by rightist militiamen, who had warned for months that they would carry out the killings.

With paramilitary violence rising, U.S. officials and leftist rebels have been demanding that Pastrana clamp down on military officers who have supported the right-wing militias.

Washington is weighing a major increase in police and military aid to Colombia, but U.S. law prohibits assistance to units implicated in human rights abuses.

The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has made its participation in peace talks conditional on government action against the landowner-backed militias, which appeared two decades ago in response to guerrilla kidnappings and extortion.

Forced into retirement Thursday was Brig. Gen. Alberto Bravo Silva, who earlier this week was relieved of his command over the army’s 5th Brigade, which has jurisdiction over the two towns near the Venezuelan border where the killings occurred.

The government gave no reason for the dismissal.

After months of warnings, paramilitary gunmen raided La Gabarra and Tibu on Aug. 20 and 21, leaving a trail of bodies of alleged leftist guerrilla sympathizers.

On Tuesday, suspected paramilitary gunmen struck again. Twenty villagers were killed, the majority executed point-blank, in a cluster of villages in Yolombo, a town in the northwestern state of Antioquia.