World

Bomb Found Prior To Senator's Visit

December 1, 2000 / 11:05 AM EST / AP

Police discovered a roadside bomb outside a town before a U.S. senator and U.S. ambassador were to visit, a Colombian police commander said Friday.

Hours before Senator Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson flew into the town of Barrancabermeja on Thursday, police discovered two shrapnel-wrapped land mines alongside the road leading from the airport to the town. They arrested a suspected rebel, Police Col. Jose Miguel Villar said.

Colombian police and Wellstone's office now say they don't believe Wellstone and Patterson were the targets. The police initially believed they were.

"I knew yesterday that we had to be careful," Wellstone said Friday on arrival at Miami International Airport, en route to Minnesota.

The land mines each carried a 6.6-pound explosive charge, were attached to cables and a detonator and were ready to be set off, Villar said in a phone interview from Barrancabermeja, 155 miles north of Bogota, the capital.

Bernardo Alvarez Duarte, a suspected member of the rebel National Liberation Army, or ELN, was arrested at the site, Villar said.

"If the bomb had gone off, it could have caused immense damage," Villar said. "It would have spread shrapnel over a wide area and could have taken out 10 or 15 people."

Many residents of Barrancabermeja had known the U.S. delegation was going to arrive. But security forces had kept confidential plans to transfer the party from the airport to the town by helicopter. Even if the bombs had exploded, the delegation would not have gone anywhere near them.

Senator Wellstone has been an outspoken opponent of the $1.3 billion Colombian anti-drug aid package, fearing it could worsen Colombia's guerrilla war and drag the United States into the four-decade old conflict.

"I have some concerns about whether counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency have become merged," Wellstone, said in an interview with The Associated Press late last week.

Washington supports the Colombian military in its fight against the ELN and a bigger rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Most of the Colombian aid package is for helicopters and other military equipment to help Colombian security forces fight guerrillas who partly finance their insurgency by protecting coca fields and cocaine laboratories. U.S. officials have insisted they will not get involved in the guerrilla war.

Wellstone has tried unsuccessfully to have Congress shift funds from Colombian military aid into domestic drug treatment programs.

"He was the only one out there, or at least the loudest out there, who was worried about the effect it would have in getting the United States into the conflict, the effect on the peace process and whether it would affect drug policy at all," said Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy, which opposes the aid plan.

After the aid package was signed by President Bill Clinton in July, Wellstone ontinued to be outspoken on Colombia, criticizing the administration for waiving human rights conditions that could have blocked the aid and opposing Republican efforts to add another $99 million to the package.

"Paul Wellstone has been a staunch ally of human rights in Colombia," said Andrew Miller of Amnesty International. "He's been instrumental in raising human rights concerns and attempting to shift the debate away from eradication efforts toward addressing the demand for drugs here in the U.S."