PLAN COLOMBIA EXPANSION THWARTED

House Rejects Bush Request on Colombia

The House last night rejected a White House request to allow
unlimited numbers of American civilians to work under contract on
U.S. military and other aid operations in Colombia, reflecting rising
congressional concern over the deteriorating situation in that
country and fears of expanded U.S. involvement.

The House move came during floor debate on the Bush administration's
$15.2 billion foreign aid bill, which includes $676 million in
military, social and economic assistance to Colombia and six other
countries in the Andean region. The Andean aid -- which emerged from
committee at $55 million less than President Bush requested -- is the
successor to last year's $1.3 billion Plan Colombia, the
military-dominated U.S. anti-drug program.

After 12 hours of debate, the overall aid bill was approved 381 to
46, the sixth of 13 appropriations bills passed thus far by the House
for fiscal 2002, which starts Oct. 1.

Although Plan Colombia passed as an emergency measure last year with
strong bipartisan support, legislators hedged their bets against
escalating U.S. involvement by capping at 500 the number of U.S.
military personnel in Colombia and limiting the number of civilian
contractors -- some of whose missions include flying aircraft into
combat areas and aerial fumigation of drug crops in rebel-held zones
- -- to 300. Bush's Andean plan included a provision to eliminate the
civilian cap.

Instead, the House last night voted to retain a cap of 800 combined
U.S. military and contractor personnel. The House voted to let the
limit of 300 civilians be waived if the president certifies the total
has not exceeded 800 and informs Congress whenever -- and by how many
- -- the number of civilians exceeds 300.

The measure was a compromise reached between the bill's floor
manager, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who heads the Appropriations
subcommittee on foreign operations, and those who wanted to retain
the absolute limit of 300, led by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).
The fact that the amendment passed quickly by voice vote, with
virtually no debate, illustrated growing concern over the U.S.
mission in Colombia.

"Last year," Conyers said, "Congress assured the public that we would
not be getting into Colombia's 37-year-old civil war, and there would
be no mission creep." The administration's proposal, he suggested,
would at the very least give rise to suspicion.

The administration won a victory as two amendments were defeated that
would have transferred a significant portion of the Andean funds into
global health programs. Any cut, Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.) argued,
would be "wrongheaded, dangerous and could jeopardize the future of
the democracies in the Andes, as well as the lives of American
children."

But with few exceptions, even the strongest defenders of staying the
military course in Colombia offered little testament to its success
so far in stemming either the export of Colombian cocaine, which has
a 90 percent share of the U.S. market, or the extent of human rights
abuses there.

Instead, they argued that the United States could not "surrender" the
drug war by retreating just because success has been slow in coming.

"There is no other alternative but to help Colombia," said Rep.
Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), one of the strongest defenders of aid to
the Colombian national police. "We must work with them to try and
improve their human rights" performance, he said of the Colombian
military.

Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.), another ardent backer of the
program, offered a muted defense of a U.S.-sponsored aerial
fumigation program that sprays chemicals on Colombian drug crops,
which also came under an attack led largely by Democrats. "It's a
tough issue," Souder said. "Nobody wants to have children or families
damaged" by chemical contaminants, he said. "It's important, though,
that we do understand this is not Agent Orange," the defoliant used
by U.S. forces in Vietnam.

After listening to fumigation supporters, Conyers withdrew an
amendment to stop the spraying program.

Overall, debate on the foreign aid bill was far less contentious than
in the past, when the Clinton administration and the Republican
leadership battled over foreign spending -- and family planning aid
in particular. The Bush administration's overall request, which
includes economic and military aid to Israel, Egypt and Jordan, $474
million for international programs to fight HIV and AIDS, and half of
the $200 million U.S. contribution to the global AIDS fund, comprises
a 2 percent increase over last year's aid and emerged from the
appropriations process largely intact.

But most of yesterday's discussion centered on Colombia and what the
administration calls its Andean Counterdrug Initiative. The bulk of
the assistance in last year's Plan Colombia was earmarked for
helicopters to give the Colombian military a rapid mobility
capability to combat left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary
forces in major drug cultivation areas. Along with the fumigation
program, the aid also included alternative development funds to help
Colombian farmers switch to non-drug crops, assistance to human
rights groups and funds for judicial reform.

But in the year since Plan Colombia was approved, there has been
little apparent improvement in the problems it was supposed to
address. Although about 123,000 acres of coca plants, the raw
material of cocaine, have been fumigated under Plan Colombia,
cultivation increased by 11 percent last year, and the U.S. goal this
year is to keep it from increasing further.

Most of the helicopters will not begin to arrive until later this
year, and the human rights situation is arguably worse. Alternative
development and judicial reform programs have been slow to get off
the ground, with only about 5 percent of Plan Colombia's appropriated
funds spent. Countries bordering Colombia have complained loudly that
guerrillas, paramilitaries and coca cultivation are spilling over
their borders and have demanded U.S. assistance.

The administration's Andean plan attempts to address at least some of
these concerns by allotting slightly less than half of the funds to
Colombia, divided evenly between military aid on the one hand, and
social and development aid on the other. The balance of the funds go
to Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, with smaller amounts for Brazil, Panama
and Ecuador.

Attention focused on civilian contractors after an American
missionary and her infant were killed in April. U.S. contract
employees working on a surveillance mission for the CIA targeted
their civilian plane as a suspected drug flight and watched as the
Peruvian Air Force shot it down.

The limit on U.S. personnel in the Andean bill applies only to
Colombia, where U.S. officials said they averaged about 180
contracted civilians and 200 military personnel last spring. The
officials estimated the 300-civilian ceiling would be reached by
December and that 500 contractor personnel would be needed next year.