HOUSE FACES COLOMBIAN DRUG VOTE

With fragile hopes and little optimism, the House this week almost
certainly will approve another huge investment in the South American
drug war despite its dim prospects.

Congress has become a reluctant soldier in the drug war -- or,
rather, a highly skeptical financial backer.

Critics fear the United States will get bogged down in the Andean
anti-drug mission, which is built around military aid to Colombia.
The House, nevertheless, is expected to approve $676 million to help
the initiative as part of a $15-billion foreign-aid bill -- a
grudging step taken for lack of a better alternative.

If Plan Colombia fails to show clear signs of success by next year,
however, future funding is in jeopardy.

Congress has become discouraged with the strategy, mainly because it
has failed to curb the flow of illegal narcotics from Colombia and
neighboring countries. From the start, critics also fumed about
funding Colombian armed forces that were notorious for human-rights
violations. Political support was further damaged when Peruvian
pilots mistakenly shot down a missionary plane, killing an American
woman and her baby.

Colombian-Americans, especially, are torn by the dilemmas posed by
U.S. funding. Many have fled to the United States, bringing their
money with them, because of the turmoil and the imminent threat of
kidnapping and murder.

"It's a controversial plan within the Colombian community. Some
Colombians support it and some don't," said Jose Luis Castillo,
chairman of the Miami-based Colombian American Foundation. "Some
Colombians fear it is only going to escalate the situation by putting
more firewood on the fire. Others think it's necessary to be more
aggressive."

For now, Congress is reluctant to undermine Colombian President
Andres Pastrana while he is struggling to broker a peace agreement
with guerrilla forces, quell the booming drug trade, eradicate
illegal crops and repair the storm-damaged countryside. Pastrana must
do all of this while trying to stem the flow of people and money out
of Colombia and counter narcotics-funded terrorism from the left and
right.

Colombia's intractable problems cannot be ignored, most members of
Congress agree, because they threaten American anti-drug efforts as
well as the stability of a strategically important region with ties
to the United States, especially Florida.

"The worst thing we could do is pull the rug out from under President
Pastrana. That would be a disaster for Colombia and our allies in the
Western Hemisphere. That would be the last resort," said Rep. Robert
Wexler, D-Boca Raton, a member of the House International Relations
Committee.

He and others predicted, however, that the United States is unlikely
to keep bankrolling Pastrana's strategy, known as Plan Colombia,
unless it begins to reduce the supplies of cocaine and heroin that
flow to the United States and Europe. So far, most evidence shows
those supplies have increased as leftist guerrillas and right-wing
paramilitary forces pump up production to fund their conflicting
causes.

"Plan Colombia probably has one more year to prove itself before it's
really curtains," Wexler said. "It's just too much American money
being spent without results, and Pastrana, whose term ends in 2002,
will be gone after next year."

Even those who point to signs of progress, such as reduced coca crops
in Bolivia and Peru, acknowledge that the Andean initiative is
teetering on the brink of defeat.

"It is nearly as fraught with the possibility for failure as it is
for success, but we have no alternatives," Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind.,
told his colleagues last week when the House began debating the
foreign-aid bill. "Without our help, there is a significant
likelihood that Colombia will become an outright narco-state
effectively under the control of terrorists and drug lords."

At former President Clinton's request, Congress last year approved
$1.3 billion for the Andean initiative, most of it for police or
military aid to eradicate coca crops and stem the drug trade in
Colombia's unruly southern provinces. The strategy was controversial
from the start because it put so much of the money into military
training, counternarcotics hardware and helicopters, and relatively
little into economic aid.

The Bush administration and Congress have proposed another round of
aid, but with modifications: About half the money in the House bill
would be spent directly on anti-narcotics efforts, with the rest on
economic assistance and other aid. About $399 million of the $676
million would go to Colombia, with the rest sent to other nations in
the region.

The House is expected to approve these measures, perhaps as early as
today. The Senate will take up a similar version, though perhaps not
until after its August break.