WELLSTONE HEADS TO COLOMBIA TO QUESTION DRUG WAR

With tight security arrangements in place, Sen. Paul Wellstone is headed to
Colombia today to investigate the U.S. government's plan to spend $1.3
billion on a military operation that includes destroying coca fields.

The Minnesota Democrat will arrive tonight in Bogota and meet with
Colombian President Andres Pastrana on Wednesday to discuss "Plan
Colombia," an attempt to eradicate the drug fields that supply as much as
90 percent of the cocaine that finds its way to the United States.

A stepped-up aerial fumigation program is set to begin shortly in Colombia,
and Wellstone intends to observe a spraying operation already underway.

With kidnappings running rampant in Colombia, Wellstone is not being
allowed to travel alone in Barrancabermeja, where he intends to meet with
the city's mayor and human-rights defenders.

"It's not an easy trip," Wellstone said in an interview on Monday. "The
number of massacres that have taken place in Colombia -- and the number of
people that have been kidnapped and executed every day -- is pretty
frightening."

Colombia has a homicide rate about 10 times higher than that of the United
States and, with more than 3,000 abductions in 1999, the highest kidnapping
rate in the world.

Wellstone will be accompanied by Jim Farrell, his policy adviser and press
officer, and Charlotte Oldham-Moore, his foreign-policy adviser.
Oldham-Moore said Wellstone had originally planned to fly to
Barrancabermeja on a civilian aircraft, but those plans were changed; he'll
fly there on a military aircraft.

"They're taking extremely high-level security arrangements for him," she
said. "They're not allowing him to even travel in the city because it's so
infiltrated by paramilitaries and guerrilla groups."

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wellstone has been a
persistent critic of U.S. military aid to Colombia, which Congress voted to
continue in June.

In July, Wellstone urged Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to
investigate the reported killing or disappearance of 71 Colombian civilians
in February.

Wellstone described the incident: "They come in ... they drink, they rape,
they murder. Human-rights workers are trying to get to the village and the
military is stopping them. We don't want our money to be used for that.
That's what I want to focus on."

Wellstone, who is making his first trip to Colombia, said his travel is
timed to a key decision awaiting President Clinton: In December, Wellstone
said, the president must decide whether to waive human-rights protections
that Congress wanted Colombia to meet before receiving any aid.

Among the conditions is that Colombia is to ensure that Armed Forces
personnel who have committed gross human-rights violations are brought to
justice, and that those who have helped paramilitary groups are suspended
from duty with the Colombian Armed Forces.

"I am especially focused on the human-rights questions because the
president is going to make a decision in December," Wellstone said. He
opposes a waiver, saying, "The reason [the conditions are] in the
legislation is that we're going to insist that the government live up to that."

The trip also will give Wellstone an opportunity to make his case that the
United States would be better off by giving more money to pay for drug
treatment in the United States instead of trying to destroy Colombian coca
fields.

"The history of these eradication efforts is that they just grow it
somewhere else," Wellstone said. "And there is some not insignificant
controversy about the use of the herbicide. We've been down this road
before. ... I want to find out more, but I'm certainly very skeptical. I
think people have every right to say, you know, 'Look, this is getting into
the water, we're concerned about the rashes, we're concerned about
respiratory problems.' ... And the question becomes if this just invites
further conflict if people in the countryside have no alternative way of
feeding their families."

Wellstone is not the only Minnesotan raising questions in Washington.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., said the $400 million cost of
the helicopters alone in Colombia would provide treatment for 200,000
Americans addicted to drugs.

"This is ludicrous and this is wrong," said Ramstad, who called the
military operation a "Colombia boondoggle."

Wellstone called the situation in Colombia "incredibly complicated" and
said the trip is important for him.

"I can't do this unless I see it with my own eyes," he said. "This is a big
part of my work in the Senate in terms of foreign policy."

Wellstone said he is following the work of Don Fraser, the former mayor of
Minneapolis and a longtime Minnesota congressman. Wellstone called him "a
giant in the international community when it came to human-rights
questions," adding that his trip to Colombia "is very much in our tradition."

Wellstone plans to return to Washington on Friday.

"We're going to be very careful," he said.

- -- The New York Times contributed to this report.