The Colombian rebel group FARC has extended its operations beyond its country's borders and is involved in politics as well as a range of illegal activities.

BY STEVEN DUDLEY

BOGOTA - A series of recent arrests around Latin America have revealed that the FARC, Colombia's oldest and largest leftist guerrilla group, is involved in everything from political lobbying to kidnappings and drug and weapons trafficking.

The discovery of links that allegedly are focused in Venezuela but extend from Argentina to Mexico has created new worries in Colombia, its immediate neighbors and other parts of Latin America.

FARC leader Raúl Reyes suggested earlier this year that the rebels would try to create ''refuges of coexistence'' inside their neighbors' territories. ''The FARC hopes to build on the borders . . . with Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Panama and Peru,'' he said in an interview with Colombian television.

With an estimated 17,000 fighters, the FARC -- the Spanish acronym of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- is the largest rebel group in the hemisphere. Its humble beginnings -- as a small group of communist-backed rebels in the early 1960s -- belie its now sophisticated international logistical and political support networks.

The bare bones of this network began to emerge with the capture of Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela last December by bounty hunters paid for by the Colombian government. Granda, whose capture caused a brief diplomatic rift between Bogotá and Caracas, was ferried to Colombia, where he awaits trial on charges of rebellion.

Granda is an admitted member of the FARC's International Committee, a small group of members who go quietly to places like Mexico and Europe to win support for their insurgency and seek alliances with like-minded organizations and governments. Colombian authorities say their job also includes brokering arms purchases, establishing a ''Latin American revolutionary movement,'' and possibly facilitating kidnappings.

Documents held by Colombian government intelligence agencies, for instance, include a report that a former FARC member had testified that Granda also trained guerrillas in explosives. Colombian authorities say that he trafficked guns from points abroad. Paraguayan and Colombian authorities also claim they intercepted e-mails linking Granda to the kidnapping of Cecilia Cubas, the daughter of former Paraguayan President Raúl Cubas, and they allege that Granda met with Cubas' kidnapper in Caracas. Cecilia Cubas' body was found earlier this year.

''Granda isn't just international political spokesman of the FARC,'' said Col. Oscar Naranjo of the Colombian police intelligence unit known as DIJIN. ``He's involved in arms trafficking. . . . Granda also ends up consulting on that kidnapping. Granda also facilitates a number of encounters, promoting the establishment of various armed groups in Latin America.''

JUST `RELATIONS'?

For his part, Raúl Reyes, a top FARC leader inside Colombia and head of its International Committee, acknowledges that the rebels have numerous contacts abroad but denies that his envoys are involved in kidnapping or other criminal activities.

''Sure, the FARC has relations with Paraguayan revolutionaries. We don't deny it,'' Reyes said in a recent interview published on the rebels' website. ``We also have relations with Brazilian revolutionaries, with Venezuelans, with the Communist Party of Cuba, and with different governments that for obvious reasons I won't name here.''

Investigators in Colombia and the United States say that Venezuela has become the FARC's most important hub of activity abroad. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has often expressed sympathy with revolutionary movements like the FARC throughout Latin America, but knowledgeable U.S. officials say there has been no evidence linking Chávez personally to the rebels.

These officials nevertheless say that Venezuela has become the FARC's principal route for trafficking guns in exchange for drugs. Venezuelan authorities have detained several FARC members involved in kidnapping and drug trafficking in recent months, and a Western anti-drug official said FARC members were linked to a seven-ton load of cocaine seized last year in the state of Guárico.

Venezuela is equally important as a political hub for the rebels. At a 2003 meeting in Venezuela, according to Colombian intelligence agencies, an international conglomerate of left-of-center organizations, including the FARC, formed the Bolivarian Continental Coordinator as part of a regionwide plan to foment resistance to U.S. policies.

With offices in Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Panama and Honduras, the Coordinator is the FARC's means of reaching out to other Latin American organizations like Brazil's Movement of the Landless, the Popular Front in Peru, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayor Movement in Argentina, and Chile's Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, authorities in Colombia say.

STRONG LINKS

This network may be tied together in part by money as well as political sympathy. According to a report by Veja magazine in Brazil earlier this year, intelligence agents there witnessed FARC emissaries offering donations to the Workers' Party for its 2002 campaign. The agents could not prove whether the money actually entered the coffers of the party. Both the Workers' Party and the FARC are part of the so-called Sao Paulo Forum, another leftist conglomeration that meets yearly in different parts of Latin America. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a member of the party.

Brazil and Ecuador have also become extremely important supply lines for the guerrillas, investigators claim. Both largely jungled borders serve as transit points for guns and drugs, and rest and recreation areas for FARC fighters. Some investigators fear that Ecuador has become more than a refuge for the FARC. Last month, guerrillas launched an attack from Ecuador that killed 19 Colombian soldiers and led Colombian military officials to call for their neighbors to beef up their border patrols.

FARC operatives also are alleged to have been extending their reach into the drugs and arms trafficking along the so-called Triple Frontier area where the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet.

In May, Argentine authorities captured Alberto Galvalisi, an alleged FARC member accused of kidnapping at least a dozen Brazilians since 1994.

And late last month, Paraguay extradited alleged FARC member Iván Carlos Mendes-Mesquita to the United States to face drug charges. He was captured last November on his ranch in northeastern Paraguay, along with a twin-engine aircraft loaded with 500 kilograms of cocaine.

''Mendes-Mesquita operated a powerful cocaine, currency and weapons smuggling enterprise,'' the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said at the time. ``He was the source of supply for numerous Brazilian trafficking organizations, including several with strong ties to the Middle East and Europe.''

LEADERSHIP LOSS

But the FARC's increasing international presence has also cost it some of its top leaders. Early last year, Ecuadorean authorities arrested a FARC chieftain, Ricardo Palmera, also known as Simón Trinidad, as he strolled the streets of the capital city of Quito -- with his wife and daughter, according to Colombian military sources.

One of the sources said that when Palmera was detained, he ``said he was on a diplomatic mission for the FARC.''

The highest-ranking FARC commander ever captured, he was quickly deported to Colombia and then was extradited to the United States early this year to face charges of drug trafficking, kidnapping and terrorism.