BUSH TO RAISE 'PRIVATE ARMY' IN DRUGS WAR

Back-Door Military Escalation In Andes.

President Bush is planning to escalate the US war against drugs from
South America with new legislation that its critics say will allow him
to deploy a 'private army' of former US servicemen across the region.

The disclosure comes amid mounting evidence that the controversial $1.3
billion Plan Colombia, a military support programme initiated by the
Clinton administration to sever the supply of Colombian cocaine, has had
a negligible impact on supplies to US cities.

Experts say coca production has been switched to neighbouring Bolivia,
Venezuela and Peru.

The claim that Bush is seeking permission to deploy his own private army
- - unanswerable to congressional oversight - comes as Congress prepares
to vote on proposals to inject cash into Plan Colombia by lifting a cap
on the number of privatised military personnel allowed to be deployed
there.

The cap, which was introduced following fears that the US could be
dragged into a new Vietnam war, limited the total to 500, in a purely
training role.

Congress also insisted that no more than 300 non-military personnel,
largely working for private companies such as Dyncorp as coca-spraying
pilots, could be in Colombia at any one time.

However, a new $676 million programme - the Andean Counterdrug
Initiative - would allow the Bush administration to deploy as many
former servicemen as it wanted.

Questions about American counter-narcotics efforts in the Andean region
have risen sharply since April, when Peruvian jets shot down a US
missionary aircraft over the Amazon river, believing it was laden with
drugs. The Peruvian fighter was guided in for the attack by a radar
plane operated by a CIA contractor.

Bush's personal involvement in lifting the cap was made clear by an
official who told the Miami Herald on Friday that 'the President
requested this'.

There are 171 American civilian contractors in Colombia now, involved in
activities ranging from aerial fumigation and military training to
administering judicial reform programmes and helping internal refugees.

Concern has also been raised by a provision in the Andean Counterdrug
Initiative legislation exempting State Department contractors from a
section of the Foreign Assistance Act that specifically bans them from
buying weapons and ammunition with federal funds.

The new legislation would allow the companies to purchase weapons and
ammunition for use in the Andean region for 'defensive purposes', a
definition, say critics, open to widespread abuse.

Underlying the concern over the escalation of Plan Colombia is a
suspicion that the entire nature of the war on drugs there is
threatening to take a dangerous turn in favour of overt military
assistance for the Colombian military against left-wing guerrilla groups
who, some US analysts claim, benefit most from cocaine production.

That suspicion has been fuelled by a report commissioned by the US Air
Force from the Rand Corporation think-tank, which says 'drugs and
insurgency are intertwined in complicated and changing ways, but the
former cannot be addressed without the latter'.

It concludes that efforts to reduce the drug supply in Colombia have
been ineffective because America has focused more on 'counter-narcotics'
than 'counter-insurgency' aid.

'We are worried that this new legislation would give the President sole
control over a private army in the Andean region without any
accountability to Congress,' Nadeam Elshami, a staffer with Democratic
Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, told The Observer last week.

Schakowsky has tabled an amendment seeking to keep the cap on civilian
military contractors in the new legislation.

'It's a back-door way of escalating our involvement in the Andean region
and providing additional money to private military contractors who have
not been effective.'