CUBARA, Colombia (AP) -- Indian tribal leaders say they have no doubt
                  leftist rebels were responsible for the slayings of three Americans in
                  Colombia and are promising to exact revenge.

                  An outraged U'wa Indian leader, Luis Eduardo Caballero, did not specify
                  how revenge would be carried out by his tribe, whose members are not
                  known to carry weapons. The American activists were on a mission to help
                  the U'wa organize schools on its reservation.

                  "We are going to identify and directly punish" those responsible, Caballero
                  said Saturday during an interview with The Associated Press just outside the
                  tribe's northeastern Colombia reservation.

                  Colombia's anti-kidnapping czar, Jose Alfredo Escobar, also blamed
                  Colombia's oldest and largest leftist rebel group -- the Revolutionary Armed
                  Forces of Colombia, or FARC -- for the killings of Indian activists Ingrid
                  Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay and environmentalist Terence Freitas.

                  Escobar cited military intelligence intercepts of alleged radio communications
                  of guerrillas holding the kidnapped Americans, whose bullet-riddled bodies
                  were found Thursday, bound and blindfolded, just across the border in
                  Venezuela.

                  By Sunday, FARC leaders still had not commented on the killings. But Pino
                  Arlacchi, director of the U.N. anti-drug program, canceled a meeting in
                  southern Colombia with top FARC commanders to discuss ways to wean
                  peasants off the cultivation of drug crops.

                  Colombia's right-wing paramilitary leadership issued a statement Sunday
                  denying involvement. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia said it
                  had no disputes with the U'wa and no units in the area.

                  Paramilitary groups are active in Arauca state, not far from Cubara, but this
                  60-square-mile (100-square-kilometer) municipality and the adjacent area
                  where the three Americans were kidnapped Feb. 25 are squarely under
                  FARC control, according to U'wa leaders and government forces.

                  The killings have perplexed Colombians because they could spoil recent
                  rebel efforts to improve their image, engage the government in peace talks
                  and improve relations with Washington.

                  Washinawatok, 41, was a member of the Menominee nation of Wisconsin.
                  Gay, 39, directed the Hawaii-based Pacific Cultural Conservancy
                  International, and Freitas, 24, who had recently moved to New York City
                  from California, had worked with the U'wa for more than two years.

                  Freitas had championed the U'wa's legal battle to prevent Los
                  Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum from drilling for oil on the indigenous
                  group's traditional lands.

                  A friend of Freitas at the U'wa Defense Working Group, Steve Kretzmann,
                  said Sunday by telephone from an environmental conference in Eugene,
                  Oregon, that Freitas had been followed in Cubara during a visit last year by
                  people he believed to be paramilitaries, who Kretzmann alleged are allied
                  with oil companies in the area.

                  He said Freitas had also received telephoned anonymous death threats at his
                  home in Oakland, California, by people who told him "to back off or die."

                  Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.