A WIDENING WAR IN COLOMBIA

Whoever wins the presidency will also inherit the Clinton
administration's risky commitment to finance the so-called drug war
in Colombia.

With the passage last June of a $1.3 billion aid package -- most of
which is military assistance -- President Clinton and Congress set
the stage for American troops and helicopters to intervene in a civil
war that has raged for nearly 40 years.

But no one can stop drug production and traffic in Colombia.
Thousands of people -- including peasants, large plantation owners,
guerrillas and death squads -- survive or thrive on narco-dollars. As
a result, none of the warring parties believe it has anything to gain
by ending the war.

Nor is it possible to limit the war to Colombia. Stop drug production
in any area of the Andean region and up pops coca fields in
neighboring nations.

To persuade other Andean countries to support what threatens to turn
into a full-scale counterinsurgency attack against leftist
guerrillas, who are involved in the drug business, the United States
is offering major assistance programs. Panama and Venezuela have
rejected such aid as bribes.

Colombia is as volatile as Vietnam was in the early 1960s, before the
United States fully entered the war in Southeast Asia. Every day
there is news of murders and massacres.

While investigating allegations that the Colombia government
tolerates torture, murder and rape, Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., a
vocal opponent of U. S. military assistance, may have been an
assassination target. Also, by accident, a helicopter sprayed him
with the same herbicide used to destroy coca fields. Such chemicals
pose health threats to peasants, their animals and land.

The United States' intervention in Colombia has still not appeared on
this country's political radar. It has the potential to turn into
America's next military nightmare, otherwise known as the Andean
regional war.