A defector from Colombia's largest guerrilla group said he soured on 'armed revolutionary struggle' because of the rebels' links to drug traffickers.

BY FRANK DAVIES

WASHINGTON - A former Colombia guerrilla chieftain who defected last year said Wednesday he became disillusioned, in part, because the rebels spent more time making money by protecting drug laboratories than on political activity.

Carlos Plotter, who claimed to have been a mid-ranking officer in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, told his story to a U.S. audience for the first time at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

He also plans to testify today before the House Government Reform Committee, which is also hearing from top U.S. and Colombian officials.

Plotter, 34, claimed he served in the guerrilla group, known as FARC, for 11 years, mainly as political commissar in the 9th Front, which operates largely in the central Antioquia region.

An electrical engineering student in the early 1990s, he joined the FARC after deciding that ''armed revolutionary struggle was the only way'' to change Colombia.

But he said that in recent years he soured on the FARC because it used ''fascist-like techniques'' to intimidate people, and spent less time on political activities than on protecting cocaine labs in order to fill its war coffers.

''The humanism that attracted me to the FARC was gone,'' Plotter said. 'There is an expression: `Nothing is worse than a guerrilla with money.' ''

In March 2003, Plotter turned himself in to the government as part of President Alvaro Uribe's efforts to demobilize rebel and paramilitary groups.

Speaking through an interpreter, Plotter said he has left Colombia at least temporarily for his safety, but hopes that ''slow reconciliation will evolve'' between warring groups.