Colombia Rebels Deny Attack on Rivals

Amid the escalating violence of Colombia’s many-sided conflict, this country’s oldest and largest insurgent group denied Sunday that its guerrillas had tortured and killed members of a smaller insurgent force.

The accusation raised the specter of an added element of violence that already pits Marxist guerrillas against right-wing private armies as well as the armed forces, including the police.

Rebel leaders in this southern jungle town--here to attend public hearings related to the prolonged peace negotiations with the government--confirmed reports of a guerrilla attack on a police station in the mountains on the other side of the country.

Police in Bogota, the capital, told local media that they feared for the more than two dozen police officers in the community of Arboleda after the attack Saturday. “It looks like many have been killed,” police Col. Mario Gutierrez said.

The attack on the police is the latest episode in the increasing violence that the National Liberation Army, known by the initials ELN, says has come to include guerrilla-against-guerrilla confrontations.

The ELN accused the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, of brutally killing its guerrillas “in a manner worthy of the paramilitaries,” the private armies that pursue both rebel groups. The paramilitaries are known for mutilating their victims before and after killing them.

However, Carlos Antonio Lozada, a spokesman for the FARC negotiating team in talks with the government, denied the alleged attack, in the remote southwestern province of Narino. “Our forces captured and disarmed 31 members of the ELN at the request of the civilian population and told them to leave the area,” he said.

The civilians accused the ELN of extortion and theft, he added, and he denied that any guerrillas had been killed.

Although both groups are Marxist, they grow out of different traditions. The FARC, with an estimated troop strength of 12,000 to 15,000 fighters, is a mixture of Communists and members of the Liberal Party who disagreed with a peace agreement that was to have ended Colombia’s civil war nearly four decades ago. They reorganized and kept fighting.

About one-third the size of the FARC, the Cuban-inspired ELN, founded by Spanish priests, grew out of the liberation theology movement. The two groups tried and failed to form a common front a decade ago and since then have largely kept a distance from each other.

Tensions have increased as each insurgent group has begun separate peace talks with the government. Security analysts have said that the prospect of negotiations intensified the struggle on all sides: All parties are trying to increase the territory under their control to strengthen their bargaining positions.

In addition, rebels and paramilitaries alike have acknowledged that they are partly financed by “taxes” on drug crops. Much of the fighting between guerrillas and paramilitaries has taken place in areas where heroin poppies and coca bushes--used to produce cocaine--are grown.

Colombia produces three-fourths of the world’s cocaine and an increasing share of the heroin consumed in the United States.

Rebels blame a $1.3-billion U.S. contribution to Plan Colombia, the government’s anti-drug and peace package, for the increased fighting in recent weeks.

About half the aid is to pay for Black Hawk and Huey helicopters for use by Colombian armed forces in protecting planes that fumigate drug crops.