DRASTIC REVISION SEEN IN COLOMBIAN MISSION

WASHINGTON The administration appears to be edging closer to a decision to
abandon the Clinton approach to Colombia, which was a typical half-fish,
half-fowl policy confining the U.S. military effort there to the war on drugs.

What the Bush team has in U.S. commitment, hasn't become clear yet. But it
isn't going to decrease.

Currently the sole mission of U.S.-trained troops there is to protect an
aerial eradication program and to raid drug labs in the jungle.

But, increasingly, it is becoming impossible to separate that mission from
another one - which is to prop up the weak democratic government of
Colombian President Andres Pastrana and maybe give it a little spine.

Pastrana, rather than fight, has ceded vast stretches of territory to the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - known by its Spanish acronym FARC
- - in a futile effort to buy peace.

The result is that, despite more than $1 billion in aid from the United
States, the guerrillas are stronger and more brazen than ever, with 90,000
civilians now under their control in a territory the size of Switzerland.

U.S. officials will try to convince Pastrana that his policy since 1998 of
ceding control of this area by calling it a demilitarized zone is a failure.

But with a year left in office, Pastrana indicates he will renew the
rebels' lease in the hope that they will come to terms. Pastrana probably
will try to hold angry U.S. representatives at bay by extraditing a former
leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel, Fabio Ochoa.

But Fabio isn't a threat anymore. The threat is the potential collapse of
civil order in Colombia and the possible loss of an important democratic
ally in the hemisphere.

The arrest of three suspected Irish Republican Army terrorists in Colombia
Aug. 11 has heightened U.S. concern that a major center of narco-terrorism
just a morning flight away from Miami is being trained in urban warfare.
The State Department is sending a team of interagency specialists into
Colombia this week to raise U.S. concerns and to try to stop the
hemorrhaging of concessions from Pastrana to the guerrillas.

At the Defense Department, officials said Colombia has risen to one of the
top priority regional concerns facing the new administration. The drift
seems to be toward a drastic revision of the U.S. mission there to permit
closer cooperation with the Colombian military in fighting the guerrillas.
In Congress, as always, there is heavy concern about the quagmire potential
of Colombia. Any escalation of U.S. involvement could run into trouble.

The IRA's links to the Colombian rebels - which the capture of the three
suspected explosives experts certainly implies - is an indication that the
guerrillas might be on the verge of spreading their war into Colombian
cities, including Bogota, some security experts believe. There are even
reports that a "super bomb" is being developed by the guerrillas. The trio
- - Niall Connolly, said to be the Sinn Fein representative in Cuba, James
Monaghan and Martin McCauley - had been in Colombia six weeks, moving
around FARC training camps.

As if to emphasize the importance of its captives, the three were taken to
the infamous La Modelo, Colombia's highest security and most dangerous
jail. They were being held without bail despite their lawyers' claim that
they are in danger of being killed in La Modelo to shut them up. The prison
has already been the scene of a bloody battle between guerrillas and
right-wing paramilitaries allied with drug traffickers, in which 10 inmates
died in a hail of grenades and automatic weapons fire.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that he now has come to
view the fight against narco-trafficking and the fight against the FARC
guerrillas as one and the same cause. Since narcotics trafficking has
resulted in areas of Colombia not under government control, it is "a threat
to democracy and a problem."

"By going after the very powerful and very wealthy narco-traffickers'
source of revenue, you can have an effect conceivably on restoring to
governments the ability to govern their countries," he said.

It sounds like the beginning of a justification for more direct and heavier
U.S. intervention to help a friendly government put down an insurrection.
And that sounds to many in Washington like Vietnam.